The Tropical Fruit Forum

Very interesting attempt, hopefully it works!

I'm not sure what you mean by "It appears to be larger than *M. basjoo*". If you mean the size of the plant, then M. basjoo is one of the largest of the banana species listed. If you mean size of fruit, then I agree M. velutina has larger fruit.

In terms of cold resistance, I would agree M. basjoo can resist about -7°C, but M. velutina I don't think can withstand below -2°C.

I did find an old report many years ago about a M. basjoo x M. acuminata cross, but the report was so old that I think it could've been a mistake given nobody else succeeded with it. Your experiments here will still be very valuable because maybe M. ornata or M. velutina could be used as a bridge species.

Yes, I was saying that Musa velutina has larger fruit than M. basjoo.

An interesting experiment! Provided the number of chromosomes matches in both species, hybridization could be successful. The result would certainly exhibit greater winter hardiness than Musa veluntina, however, the fruit quality will likely be poor, as the fruits of Musa basjoo, in my experience, are inedible even when fully ripe, and are also full of seeds and very small.

I'm not sure why I can't upload the photos so you can compare shapes and sizes, but anyway, I've already started the project. I'd like to get fruit since the one that came with the flower didn't form seeds or pulp. What's your tasting experience like? Do you have photos of the developed, ripe fruit? There are hardly any photos of that. The velutina and ornata have a good flavor, but because of their seeds, I'm not sure they can be used, except if you soak them in milk and strain it. My idea is to use bridge crosses, since crossing M. basjoo directly with something like bluggoe could make the plant cold-resistant but tall and slow to grow and ripen the fruit, which wouldn't be useful for obtaining fruit in cold climates. My project should have more complex crosses. Musa velutina would be good to speed things up and keep it short so it can be covered in winter. The other variety that could contribute genetics is the Veinte Cohol banana, which has the fastest growing cycle… and it's also capable of producing seeds if pollinated. Perhaps [M. acuminata Veinte Cohol X (M. velutina x M. basjoo)] would be the best mix. The problem is that it might not be sterile, so they would have to castrate its flowers to prevent seed production. We'll take it one step at a time.

I'm updating my projects and results. I've managed to build a fairly rich collection of genetic resources. I have three types of Cavendish, including a dwarf variety. I also have Gros Michel dwarf, Nam Wa, common and silver Bluggoe, silver, apple, FHIA 01, Veinte Cohol, another unknown diploid called Charake, and some Musa balbiciana, among others. This is their first spring, so I'm going to bring them indoors to protect them from the cold.

The pollen of the bluggoe did not work in my first tests on ornata, but it did work on velutina, although I burned those fruits in the winter and they did not progress (another problem of these investigations in cold climates).


On the other hand, Bluggoe, as a mother plant, has been successful in producing seeds with Ornata. The seeds formed two clusters, averaging one seed per three or four bananas; some even had two seeds. Therefore, I recommend it as a good mother plant. However, the cold also ruined the fruit.

After discussing and reading about experiences, I'd like to offer some recommendations to narrow down the options presented in this topic. According to other hybridizers, it seems feasible to generate abundant and easy-to-germinate seeds in cultivars such as Ae Ae, Popoulu, and Blue Java. All three are triploid, so their offspring can be 2x, 3x, and 4x... although polyploids can produce very diverse lineages. An example is Gros Michel, which can produce offspring ranging from 4x to 7x.

If you're an amateur with limited resources, I wouldn't experiment with colchicine. I've done it several times and don't think I've achieved anything. Scientific studies omit the fact that they work with cultures of 100 individuals, "in vitro," using oscillators and substances that make cells permeable, and even then, they only produce a few polyploids. Many are chimeras, some are unstable (they regress), and they're almost impossible to recognize with the naked eye. With certified tetraploids available in the US and elsewhere, this step would be completely unnecessary. FHIA 21 is a good pollinator and capable of producing a large number of triploid offspring.

Mis recomendaciones:
1- si sos de clima frio invertir primero en in invernadero.

2- elegir variedades enanas (facil de cubrir o cultivar en maceta).

3-elegir tetraploides como los Fhia , ya que son resistentes a enfermedades, iguales a las variedades mas usadas y son tetraploides capaces de generar polen diploide para hacer 3x. O usar triploides de facil formacion de semillas, ya que despues debemos seleccionar de sus hijas la mejor (testeo en campo y produccion).

Opciones con evidencia:
veinte cohol AA (forma semillas y es banano enano , ciclo corto y macuracion en 40 dias)
AAB: ae ae y maia maoli

ABB: blue java, pisan awak y bluggoe.

Hi Lauta_hibrid,

I can make photos in two days. But the seedlings are still small, except C. ichangensis x Chandler and Poncirus x Chandler (Chandler as the pollen parent).

Chandler is, by the way, a very difficult mother plant. You have to cut off all flowers except the pollinated ones because Chandler dropps all fruitlets from a corymb except the last ones, even when the last ones contain no seeds. And then you get no more than a handful seeds from each fruit. It can be less: one or two. Chandler seems to dislike non-pumelo pollen. Hybrids with Poncirus seem to be impossible. Only pollen of African Shadock x Poncirus led to many seeds - probably because it is half pumelo. But Citrumelo pollen is already difficult. The big fruits let you believe that you have many seeds. You wait very long until they are ripe. and finally you get no seeds or very few. I believed for some years that the low seed production was my fault but I am now conviced that Chandler is just difficult. I used fresh and frozen pollen. I tried many combinations. I took care of the flower position. I cut off all non treated flowers. But always the same result. Chandler is best used as pollen parent.

You unconsciously did what I wanted to do: use Poncirus as the seed mother and Citrus as the pollen father. I've noticed that some of these crosses, like Morton, are more similar to Citrus than to Poncirus, so I want to repeat the experiment to confirm this hypothesis. If you can, upload photos; it would be very interesting. I hope the seedlessness is heritable; it's a very desirable trait since most of these cold-resistant citrus varieties tend to have so many seeds that they take up space from the pulp. In the case of Satsuma and its hybrids, this seedless inheritance occurs through the seed. This year I'm pollinating Dekopon to transfer this genetics that has passed from Satsuma to Kiyomi and from Kiyomi to its offspring, Dekopon, always using the one with the maternal genetics as the pollen recipient. We'll see if Dekopon produces any seeds after being stimulated.

Has anybody experience with crosses between Lemon and Pumelo or Citron and Pumelo? There are some such crosses around. I saw them in the catalog of Agrumi Lenzi. But I have never seen or tasted one. I wonder if the peel is edible or not.

I was going to post and saw your last comment, haha! This year I might be able to reply since I have flowers on my own pummelo x lemon hybrid. Besides that, I wanted to share some other lemon hybrids I made this year: Meyer x Flying Dragon (one is budding well, it looks nice). And the other is lemon x Morton; this second one is unusual because it's very trifoliate and is so 1/4 Poncirus… I'll see how it develops.

Genoa Lemon x Morton:


Meyer lemon x poncirus Flying dragón

I'm from La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Here, since the 1970s, a variety of banana has become fashionable that actually bears fruit. It tolerates winter frosts, although the fruit can be damaged if it flowers near winter. It belongs to the Blugooe ABB group. My recommendation is to stop fertilizing after summer to avoid stimulating flowering in autumn. In my experience, the Mysore variety also flowered and fruited.

This question arose after showing the flowers of my Genoa Lemon x C. maxima hybrids. Let me start by clarifying that the Citrus Maxima I have are ancient, seed-bearing trees. They have white flesh and several seeds. When ripe, they release a strong grapefruit scent (I've heard of varieties that don't).

My first Citrus Maxima seed was grown using the technique in a Florida video. I think it's called RES, which is to stimulate rapid flowering in citrus trees.

This technique is easy: all branches are cut and the plant is forced to grow vertically until it reaches 3.5 m in height, at which point it is allowed to branch. This causes the terminal tip to age rapidly due to the rapid division of its cells, since all its energy is concentrated in the apical bud.


Many citrus fruits take an average of 7 years (depending on the conditions and whether they are grown in soil or pots), and can take up to 10 years.
The technique is uncomfortable because the wind blows the plants away and they have to be tied to a guide. It is also complicated for cold climates since they would be more exposed to the environment, but there are similar techniques using grafts. In my experience: I planted Citrus maxima seeds from a greengrocer in 2019, and they flowered in the spring of 2023, at 3.5m tall (as seen in the photo) without me realizing it, and from there the first fruit that I harvested in the winter of 2024 emerged. I took a bud from the branch that flowered and duplicated the tree by placing it in the ground to have a shorter clone (I pruned the main plant to use its root in another hybrid). Today, in the spring of 2025, my clone is flowering.

Unraveling the complex story of intergenomic recombination in ABB allotriploid bananas
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/830059v1.full

Here I present my two hybrid brothers, it's the same cross and the same years. The strange thing is how genetics play. The first is of inflorescience almost equal to Citrus maximum, its flowers of almost the same size as its father and the leaves sprout with abundant anthocyanic color bordó. This hybrid has large and hard leaves (like C. maximum) but without winged pecieolo, or only some rudimentary notches of these. The smell of its leaves is intense of Kaffir lime. My question is, is it that the genetics of this smell are lost inside Citrus plus one? Keep in mind that both belong to a branch that separated from all other citrus fruits, together with C. medica.

Here are the velutina genetic hybrids I could find. There's also an AV hybrid to give you an idea of ​​what can happen when crossing edible bananas. Although Musa acuminata zebrina doesn't exhibit parthenocarpy (it doesn't produce fruit with pulp or seeds). Only Musa acuminata subspecies banksii and its descendants (edible bananas and plantains) have achieved parthenocarpy. If anyone has sikimensis seeds they'd like to share for my projects, or another resistant banana, they'd be welcome. And if anyone travels from Argentina to the US, let me know so I can give them seeds.

I think I mentioned it at the beginning, Musa acuminata is the only one that develops parthenocarpy, so if you make another triploid species it will not produce edible fruit (it is not parthenocarpy). That's why all edible plants in Eumusa are AB, AAB or ABB, they always have A (acuminata) in their genetics. My idea is to cross the hardiest of the edible plants (ABB bluggoe) to pass parthenocarpy and cold resistance to Musa velutina (VV). To achieve something with AV, ABV or ABBV genetics. If it comes out AV, it may lose sterility, but it could be used in more complex crosses or in more generations to try to prevent it from setting seeds. The other option is to use AV (from the first cross) and cross back to Velutian to make something like Vª V, where the first V with a small ª represents that the chromosome was mixed and has genes from the A chromosome, thus transferring the parthenocarpy sequence which would be composed of only 3 regulatory genes. This would still be a more complex task, but for now it would be a success if I managed to get a triploid ABV since it would produce seedless fruit in the first generation. Let's keep in mind the experience gained using Fhia 21 (AAAB) pollen with a wild AA. The majority were triploid and produced seedless fruit, which shows us that it can be achieved in one generation and only take a few years. If anyone is from a place where Fhia 21 or another tetraploid type Bluggoe from Fhia can be obtained, I advise you to use it.

I don't know which is more resistant, M. basjoo, M. velutina, or M. sikimensis... Have you ever compared them? My project is based on what I have here in my country. If anyone wants to send me seeds, they're welcome. I'll see if I can get my hands on some M. basjoo; I think a collector here has some. But you also have to keep in mind that flowering must be rapid, and velutina already gives me that characteristic.

Redomestication of Cold-Resistant Bananas

To understand the domestication of bananas, we begin with two species that have an impact on today's edible varieties: Musa acuminata and Musa balbidiana.
About 7,000 years ago in New Zealand, a mutation appeared in some Musa acuminata ssp. bankssi plants, which produced fruit and pulp without needing to be pollinated (parthenocarpic fruit). This characteristic was passed from one plant to another, from this subspecies to others, and even to other species through hybridization, generating enormous genetic complexity in modern cultivars.
Sterility was an independent event, since if pollen from wild varieties was available, these cultivars would continue to produce seeds. One of the events that reinforce sterility is the triploidy mutation; therefore, most current cultivars are triploid.
Independently, further north, in colder regions like India, Musa balbisina was independently domesticated, enlarging the fruit and producing softer, often sterile seeds, thus enabling the fruit to be used in a variety of ways.
When the "cultivable" Musa acuminata was introduced alongside the balbisiana, they hybridized, generating AB plants, thus transferring parthenocarpy to this second species.
There were some plants that did not fit well with the classification and appeared to be fully parthenocarpic Musa balbisiana genetically, designated by some authors as BBB rather than ABB. Through recent genetic studies, it has been possible to elucidate that ABB cultivars may have a more complex history and appear to have originated from AB cultivars.
The ABs were backcrossed until plants with almost complete Balbisiana genetics were obtained, but they retained the Musa acuminata genes that generate parthenocarpy. A cross with Balbisiana was then carried out, giving rise to different lines of ABB cultivars. For this reason, some ABBs appear as BBB in analysis.
THIS TELLS US THAT WE CAN BRING PARTHENOCARPY TO DIFFERENT SPECIES OF COLD-RESISTANT BANANA, GENERATING ALMOST COMPLETELY PURE GENETICS, BUT WITH THE CORRECT GENES TO PRODUCE EDIBLE FRUIT.
THE PROJECT:
Taking these factors into account, we can develop strategies to accelerate this process, but using Musas with cold resistance and aptitude for cultivation in cold climates.
To begin, we can directly use the most cold-resistant and parthenocarpic cultivar: Bluggoe ABB.
Benefit: It is already cold-hardy, producing in my zone 9, and its height is 2.5 to 3 m at the time of fruit production. It tastes good when ripe and cooked.
Regarding its useful residual fertility: it is occasionally capable of developing viable pollen and easily forming seeds (when crossing it with Musa ornata, I obtained 1 seed for every 3 fruits).
Its seeds tend to have poor fertility, but if they sprout, they usually have diploid and "triploid" genetics, very rarely tetraploids.

Optimally cold-resistant parent:
Musa velutina:
Dwarf cultivar (flowers at 1.6 m), short seed-to-fruit cycle (18 months), possible to grow in a pot for winter protection, low light requirements (although it improves in the sun). Easy hybridization with acuminata, cold-hardy (USDA 7b).

So, what do you think of my project? What do you think? If anyone else wants to develop their own, I can pass on the information I've gathered over the years.

I thought it was funny because my friend Victor told me so. Its name comes from my experiments, which are already bearing fruit (literally). I used the Limequat Eutis and pollinated it with the Nagami Kumquat. That's why this hybrid has a double "quat" (limequatquat). Last spring, I obtained the first flowers, although the fruit didn't set. This made me think it would be a good idea to use its pollen, and the best recipient could be Nagami again. That's why the third "quat." My original idea was to use the Eutis since it looks and tastes like lime, but the skin becomes edible when it's very ripe. If I crossed it again, I would get something like a kumquat, but with a lime flavor and an edible skin. However, by making this last cross, I suppose the lime component has been greatly reduced. It would be the result of a limequat-quat-quat: 12.5% lime and 87.5% kumquat.  I'm currently harvesting and planting the seeds, but they'll be something eye-catching... since fruits like the kumquat are so unique, the idea of making more versions seems very interesting to me, which is why I already have several backcrosses waiting to flower and see what will come out. Limequat, mandarinquat, orangequat and calamondin x Nagami and Meiwa.
Flower of limequatquat:

Fruit of Nagami x limequatquat