Zill Mango advice for wet tropics Qld

[fruit nerd]

Hello, was wondering what mangoes from the Gary Zill breeding program would be suitable for my location. I live in a wet, humid location (wet tropics of Queensland, Australia) and we get 2-5m of rain in a year. For this reason, disease resistance is important. Also, we don't get too cold here. 10C (50F) is about the coldest it'll get here and we can get warm winters where we don't get many cold nights at all. I can buy Orange Sherbet, Sweet Tart and Coconut Cream now but Fruit Punch and Little Gem are also available here.

[JR561]

Out of all of those Little Gem would be the best choice.

[David H]

Fruit nerd,   The mangos being sold as Pickering, Little Gem, Fruit Punch ,  , and several others were imported as SEED from Florida, by Mike Rule.  I swapped wood of some with Mike to try here, but Mike made it clear to me and anyone that there he was growing them out of interest, and that a lot were from monembryonic cultivars.  He would have made that clear to others as well.   I assume you know what a monoembryonic mango is, Those seedlings could bear good fruit, or it could be hopeless, there is no guarantee. They are genetically different to the cultivar they came from. It is truly deplorable that nursery/s are selling  those plants as named cultivars. They  are NOT the same as the cultivars in Florida.   The polyembryonic seeds he imported (Orange Sherbet, Lemon Zest, Coconut Cream , a few others ) should be true to type, but it is possible that a zygotic seedling/s  is among those as well. 

[fruit nerd]

Thanks for the suggestion JR561. Also, thanks for the information David. Might have to avoid the monoembryonic cultivars then.

[Gone tropo]

Mick a guy down in nth nsw has grown orange sherbert, lemon zest, fruit punch and a few others likely from same source as everyone else. He is cutting his fruit punch tree out as it is junk. He also taste tested lemon zest against kp and I think honey gold with a few of his friends and I think out of the whole group only one person rated Lemon zest as superior to kp.

He says orange sherbert seems to produce decent fruit but they are not hyped up like discussed on this forum. I would say there is a huge cultural element here with Americans growing up with different mangos to us.

People in the US even rate keitt and Palmer etc
Over KP these have strong chemical taste which mike t has described on past threads and I agree with him 100%.

Maha and honey gold are hard to beat

[fruit nerd]

Interesting. I think the honey gold is a good one and I have a seedling that I want to plant. Maybe I should plant that first and wait for now. Thanks.

[0hip]

trina was selling golden queen mangos recently which is apparently very good for the wet tropics. i think that was the name at least

[Oolie]

Taste-wise Aussies will like the Sweet tart, and it's poly.
It's probably not the most productive in the regions that lack a cool winter however, but the fruit are good.

I really like the Parsnip flavored ones like Aussies, but the new Zill ones are mostly Mono like their parent ZINC, which is a really good fruit.

Sweet Tart and Kathy are exceptions, and both are highly acclaimed. Kathy will probably be the one with the most fans when it finally gets there.

[fruit nerd]

Thanks 0hip. That's one I might look at getting. Golden Queen comes from southern Taiwan I believe and they have a similar climate to here. I think we have seen Trina selling Golden Queen before but we didn't know that Golden Queen is Jin Huang (the mandarin name for the cultivar) at the time.

Thanks Oolie, Sweet Tart could be worth a try .

[Mike T]

Yes get Golden Queen from Trina and it fruits 2 months later than most. Cedar bay/Rabaul does pretty well in the wet tropics. Keow sawoy does alright as well.Honey gold likes it a bit drier and cooler.

[David H]

It's not a Zill mango, as the seed was collected in Vietnam by David Fairchild, but Fairchild is the most disease resistant for us.  We had over 900 mm rain  in Dec-Jan.   Picked a good crop of Fairchild in Feb.  All ripened without a blemish.  It's  a delicious mango , but small. Fibreless.   Dwarf tree here.  About  2.8 metres  high after about 40 years, never been pruned.     Cat Thom ( Cat means fibreless,  Thom means fragrant ) , also from Vietnam, is almost as disease resistant as Fairchild here.  Excellent mango.  Cat Chu  from Vietnam gets some  marking.  Doesn't bear as well as Fairchild and Cat Thom here.   Cedar Bay  marked badly this year.  Nam Dok Mai  # 4   had clean fruit, and is a small tree too.

[David H]

Carrie had quite a good crop of clean fruit . We had a bad year for fruit piercing moth, and lost some due to my leaving them a bit too long on the  tree.

[David H]

 I should have mentioned Mallika. Ripens pretty late, we ate the last one a few days ago.  Bred in India, but  very clean fruit after all the rain. Fruits moderately most years here. Excellent mango, a different flavour category to other mangos here.  A dwarf tree here as well , as it is in India. Apparently gets a  bit larger tree in some regions.  I gave some fruit to some friends who hadn't grown up with mangos. I warned them that they might find the fruit flavour a bit too rich. They liked them a lot. I was surprised.

[David H]

 I've just come in again.  I forgot to mention a mango that you should chase up, Fruit nerd, if you don't have it.  Kamerunga White.  I don't know if the original tree still exists , but it fruited well in Cairns. I don't know if it fruited well every year, though. Someone else might know.   A very interesting mango.  The flesh is  a cream colour.  Len Muller and Laurie Smith
had a collection of mangos at Woopen Creek, and it fruited for them there.  I don't know how heavily it fruited there.   K. White, as well as having the very pale flesh, has a distinctly different flavour to any other mango I know.  It would be interesting to have a DNA test done on it.   Len  knew a lot about mangos and Mangifere species.  He reckoned it was a Mangifera species that he didn't know.   I don't know, but it might be an interspecific hybrid.  The fruit is very good, I.M.O.. It fruits well here every couple of years. Sets well, and the
fruit  are always very clean, including this year.  It is polyembryonic.  There are seeds still on the ground under the tree, so if you want seed, let me know shortly. I don't know if  the seeds are still viable, but they might be.  It finished fruiting roughly 8 or 9 days ago.

[murahilin]

I think I should ban all the Australians who blaspheme the GOAT.

[Gone tropo]

David h thats some good mango advice there, i think though that the climate up there at ravenshoe is far less wet than where fruit nerd is (near me). I recorded 4201mm of rain from December to march for this wet season which would far far exceed anything up on the tableands.

[David H]

Gone Troppo,   Sure. I realise that. I'm just giving a bit of information , in case it is of any use. Woopen Creek would be among the highest rainfall areas, which is why I gave that bit of info.

[Mike T]

Mmmm Woopen Creek is that Blair? Anyway Woopen Creek averages right on 4000mm/yr and Ravenshoe almost on the same latitude is a comparative dustbowl with around 1400mm/yr average and its at 920m (3000ft) altitude. Comparing apples with oranges with mango varieties and the choices for Woopen Creek are limited.
I remember the white fleshed indica from Kamerunga and it was next to the carpark. Cairns City Council were eager to get rid of it and in fact anything rare or odd. It was 1994 they chopped it down I believe but there are still a few mangoes of unknown types on the property. The flesh wasn't really white and it didn't strike me as something special unlike say the row of various varieties of pulasan.

[David H]

I might try the Golden Queen one here.  I don't get to the coast much.  Who is Trina ?

[fruit nerd]

Trina sells a wide range of rare tropical fruit trees at local markets.

[0hip]

mike whats this place at  Kamerunga. Is there another fruit tree gardens we can visit there?

[Mike T]

Trina is the manager of fruitforumfarm at Feluga and Kamerunga was the Government Quarantine and tropical fruit research facility between about 1890 and 1994. It imported tropical fruits and tested them. Most australian, mango, lychee, sapodilla, abiu, chupa chupa, pulasan, rambutan etc varieties went through and were distributed from there

[David H]

Thanks Mike and fruit nerd.    It's probably not necessary to add this, but Mike means Kamerunga Research Staion. , which was located at Kamerunga.  Kamerunga is a suburb of Cairns.

[David H]

I  went there many times in the early 1980 s, when I imported a lot of Casimiroa and Cherimoya cultivars,as well as carissa and Carobs.  Lost the Carob because the propagator  there
didn't give the budded plants the correct treatment after the buds took successfully.  He didn't bother asking me.  Just cut off the stocks above the bud.  The carobs needed to have
the stocks to be cut through partly above the bud, and bent over .   Time and money down the drain.

[David H]

Since I'm in for a  cuppa, I'll add a funny story.  After importing, planting , growing the different cherimoya cultivars, we took one lot of fruit to Rusty's market in Cairns, in an excess of enthusiasm.   We didn't have a regular stall there, and  predictably we didn't sell a lot of Cherimoya fruit, as  no -one knew us , or Cherimoya fruit.  I don't know if the bloke waited until I went away from the stall for a while,, but he gave Jo a  five-minute telling off, accusing us of being liars and frauds, etc, because he was from Europe, knew all about Cherimoyas,  there were no cherimoyas grown in Australia,etc.   So I came back to the stall, Jo was upset about it all, and that was our last trip to Rusty's market.   Bit of a shame in the end. There
were some excellent flavoured fruit among them.