Author Topic: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus  (Read 1012 times)

Vlad

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Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« on: January 15, 2022, 10:11:03 AM »
Would a seedling grafted to a fast flowering Poncirus seedling produce fruit sooner than on its own roots?

citrange

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2022, 11:41:15 AM »
No.

pagnr

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2022, 05:37:15 PM »
In my experience, I budded a seedling scion wood to 5 year old Flying Dragon. These FD stocks had nearly all flowered fruited at this age.
The FD trees budded with the seedling grew well and promptly flowered and fruited.
The original seedling has not yet flowered.
The FD trees were in 5 litre pots, so bigger than the usual FD seedlings, but not overly large trees,
i.e. it was not like top working a big rootstock.
Mostly Citrus are grafted to young immature stocks, so this wouldn't show up.

I think it is worth investigating grafting onto early flowering rootstocks.
Since the fast flowering trifoliata is a small plant, you may lose some vigour ??
There may be a chemical/hormone flowering factor transmitted to the scion from the flowering aged stock.
Most Citrus are complex hybrids of several "species", there may be competing genes for flowering time.
This may be why there is no clear answer to advancing flowering time, but many anecdotes.
Also it may not work equally for all Citrus types, depending on the ancestry.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2022, 04:44:17 AM by pagnr »

tedburn

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2022, 05:42:54 PM »
thank you, thats a very interessting information, cause I also thought if it would be worth to graft on fast flowering poncirus to get immature seedlings earlier to flower and fruit.

EricSC

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2022, 06:19:15 PM »
I budded Loquot from two trees (one matrue and one young)  to a mature tree.  The results are:

1, The bud from a mature tree grafted to a mature tree grown well and produced flowers in the first year.
2, The bud from a 2 years old tree grafted to a mature tree grown well but did not produce flowers in the first year.   Not sure what will happen for the second year.

citrange

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2022, 04:57:00 AM »
Over the years I have read many reports on attempts to consistently induce early flowering in citrus seedlings. This has always been important commercially in order to develop new varieties. Methods attempted have included choice of rootstocks, height of grafting, hormone treatments, budding another flowering twig below the new graft, restricting sap flow by bending, etc. etc. As far as I know, none of these has been consistently and significantly successful. The exception may be the introduction of early-flowering genes from another species (arabidopsis?) but I'm not sure this has been used outside laboratory experiments and may not be acceptable to some people.
The idea that there is an early-flowering 'hormone' that can be transferred from flowering to non-flowering seedling has often been claimed - and named florigen - but never scientifically accepted or isolated.
I have grown early-flowering Poncirus seedlings for many years. Some seedlings do indeed flower when the plants are still only about 15cms/6" tall, but for me the flowers do not form fruits until the seedlings are bigger. And they are so slow growing that this takes many more years. I have not used them as rootstocks because in my cool climate I need something vigorous.
There are of course many anecdotal reports of inducing early flowering, such as the one by pagnr in this thread using FD rootstocks. He is lucky his FDs are flowering after 5 years - mine take 10 years or more! I also spoke to one French nurseryman who said that standard Poncirus seedlings flowered much earlier if a FD interstock was used.

pagnr

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Re: Grafting onto fast flowering Poncirus
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2022, 06:26:14 AM »
I have had a few instances of snapped twigs inducing flowering. On a chinotto seedling and also a fingerlime seedling. Flowered but not set.
Recently I bent and snapped a rangpur lime rootstock sucker, on a plant budded to Microcitrus. This one flowered and has held fruit.
None of the other bent suckers on the same plant flowered.
It seems to have induced flowering, however the rootstock plant is probably old enough to flower on its own.
On the other hand I often bend and snap the top of rootstocks to force buds, and none of those has ever flowered.
Also plenty of snapped twigs never flowered either.