The Tropical Fruit Forum

I use most fertilizers at 1/4 strength for the first application- with fertilizers a little goes a long way, and the punishment for going overboard is severe

The main benefit of the holly tone is the acidification of the soil- could also be that you swung the pH of the soil in the pot too quickly

Gotcha. I've been very slowly re-adding it to some of the more acid-liking ones in the collection after letting them get settled in the new mix.

PM sent

Grimal and Restinga are very tolerant of my high PH water. Sabara a little less. Red and white really don't like it. Cambuca doesn't either.

I am really happy to have been able to stop acidifying water for a lot of my jabo collection. They grow faster and more lush when I acidify but it's a big PITA so I stopped doing it and have been trying to handle it just with sulphur pellets.  (Edit: Also, a couple of my cambuca are doing fine with the water but it killed some of them).

If you're at 8.7, pretty similar to me, you can use 1-2ml of Advanced Nutrients phosphoric acid for for 2.5 gallons of water and you'll be fine. I was using 5ml+ for blueberries and miracle fruit to get to my target PH on those. I have since given up on those really low ph plants because it's too hard to reliably nail the PH.

Interesting. My sabaras like the local water less than the reds and whites, oddly. I wonder what the difference there is.

I'll give the phosphoric acid a shot, and I appreciate the tip.

Just a data point re miracle fruit: I have a couple of them that I give distilled water to because I started following Logees advice sheet on those a couple years ago (50/50 peat and pearlite, distilled or rainwater). They do fine on that for me, fruit every month or two, and collectively drink less than a gallon a week as long as the peat stays moist, so I'm willing to eat the mild cost. I'll also occasionally re-boil saved coffee grounds in distilled water and give them a root soak in that for a while and they seem to like that. They're actually my least fussy plants now that the routine is down.

EDIT: Probably this could be it's own thread, but about fifty percent of Eugenia species I try also HATE the water here, and I never know which ones it will be.

good to know!

any pics?

Absolutely.

A pair of tennine-month-old grimals, not a lot of salt damage compared to how sabaras look on our local water (burnt) but some:


Restinga of the same age:


And for comparison, an Otto Anderson that's having a bit more trouble than either (but still not as much as sabara):


Fwiw these are all in the same mix (I think the Otto got moved to slightly more acidic soil actually) getting the same treatment, and they're all receiving tap water that HAS been filtered through a Berkey, however that filtered water is STILL as hard as most other places' raw tap water post-filter (our water comes from the aptly named "Salt River"; I don't know why I'm trying to grow plinia and eugenia out here but it's certainly providing some data). They've gotten a bit of supplemental foilar iron but I haven't started them on a dedicated foilar feeding program yet, I don't want to accidentally burn them when they're so young.

Meanwhile here's a seven-month-old mulchi that just dgaf and drinks straight from the salty, salty tap:

worth noting that many Jabo/Plinia varieties are newer and IIRC Grimal is pretty old- so it may just be that many of these have not been trialed yet

Ah gotcha, I'm pretty new to jaboticaba specifically so I'm missing some of the varietal history.


Edit: The sabaras, whites, Frankie's dwarves that I got from Shiloh, plus a few other related species I've had to move onto the "miracle fruit protocol" of nearly pure peat moss and distilled water; for cost reasons I'm working on weaning those back onto filtered crapwater and am seriously considering buying a second Berkey just to double-filter for the jaboticaba specifically. Bigger reds and sabaras, I've had do passably okay outside on pure tap water so I know it's possible if they can get to a certain tolerance.

2Edit: I think the touchiest I've dealt with so far is guaporetti/plinia rivularis, I don't think my surviving pair are ever going to be off distilled/heavily filtered water.

Oops, sorry.  I was thinking of Mutingia calabura, a truly awful tree, also called "strawberry tree."

Aww what's wrong with Mutingia Calabura? They have pretty white flowers. (I know they can be invasive in some places but they're not invasive everywhere).

Are there any other tropical crops that are unhealthy to eat a lot of?  What about yuca, I eat a lot of that both from my yard & the cassava flour tortillas & pastas?

In addition to what others said:

chaya when it isn't cooked enough (hydrogen cyanide content that breaks down with cooking)
katuk in huge amounts: https://www.eattheweeds.com/edible-katuk-sauropus-androgynus-2/
bitter melon in huge amounts (common story with anti-diabetic stuff, anything that helps with blood sugar seems to be rough on the liver in large volume)
monkey orange/strychnos spinosa when the fruit isn't ripe

I've come across more, but those off the top of my head.

According to the table on the first page of this discussion, paw paw has approximately 2,000 times the annonacin content of atemoya. Presuming this was indeed the causitive factor,  I would need to consume over 600,000 lbs of atemoya pulp in 10 years to get the same effect. Put another way, that is  167 pounds a day for 10 years. I think I'm safe.

Yeah, atemoya and biriba seemed to have the lowest amounts tested in every study so far. I really wish somebody would test cherimoya.

If you look at the incidence rate of Parkinson’s in the population that the document studied, the incidence rate of Parkinson’s on the island is not higher than the incidence rate of Parkinson’s in mainland USA. Therefore, the consumption of annona fruits does not cause Parkinson’s.

The incidence rate of standard Parkinson's (what you're referring to here) doesn't matter in the case of the studies, since they were expressly looking at atypical Parkinson's/ atypical parkinsonism: that is, Parkinson's-adjacent symptoms and degenerative disease progression that don't have the same cause or response to the same treatments as standard Parkinson's. The American Parkinson Disease Association has a decent explanation of the difference on their website: https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/atypical-parkinsonism/ So does John Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/parkinsons-disease/atypical-parkinsonian-disorders .

The studies in Guadeloupe used MRI and testing to exclude normal Parkinson's (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17303592/), and all of the relevant studies refer to "atypical parkinsonism" in the title. The guy who ate 30 lbs. of paw paws a year in the study linked originally at the top of this thread also had atypical Parkinson's/ parkinsonism.

"Parkinsonism", which just means "the symptoms of Parkinson's regardless of cause", is generally the result of damage to or loss of functioning of dopamine neurons. Multiple studies in vitro and in vivo have shown that chemicals in annona plants can damage dopamine neurons, which is why this research/discussion is even happening.

(Also the US is a poor benchmark even for standard Parkinson's as we have a slightly-above-global-average rate of standard-Parkinson's deaths anyway, if we were going to look at that. But again it doesn't matter, even if deaths to atypical Parkinsons get folded into the WHO numbers, because the studies screened for that. there is some confusion since some of the other countries that have or had high atypical parkinsonism, like Guam, also have or had high rates of standard Parkinson's.)

HOWEVER, if you do have Parkinson’s, it will make it worse! You will develop a “parkinsonism”, which is a more severe and less treatable version of Parkinson’s. The incidence rate of parkinsonisms in that island is much higher than in mainland USA. That said, there is some evidence that if you stop eating annona, you downgrade back to regular Parkinson’s.

This seems to be a misunderstanding about what "parkinsonism" means."Parkinsonism" just means "disease with Parkinson's symptoms", it's not something extra on top of Parkinson's. The incidence of atypical parkinsonism is what was being studied in regards to the annonas. Not standard levadopa-responsive Parkinson's. The studies looked at people who did NOT have Parkinson's but instead had atypical Parkinson's.

EDIT: I can't find any indication that excludes people with Parkinson's also having MORE dopamine neuron damage from a different source than pre-existing Parkinson's, but again that wasn't what was being studied.

But, all fruits and veggies make their own insecticides to some degree, so we throw those dice anytime we eat anything plant based.

The various insecticides found in fruit and vegetables are wildly different in physical effects and many are better-studied than acetogenins. The glucosinolates that make broccoli bitter are an insecticide (and safe for human consumption in amounts found in broccoli), while solanine is also an insecticide (which is NOT safe for human consumption). Eating food that has under-studied nerve-damaging chemicals in clinically relevant amounts from normal consumption (like the annonans) is more of a potential risk to most people than eating a chili pepper containing some capscacin, despite both of those containing "insecticides to some degree".

I think the studies do make some big leaps, from directly injecting/ingesting  rats with Annonacin toxin, to applying the same chemical to extracted neurons in a petri dish. Then connecting this to Annona fruit use.

That's how they study what chemicals do, though. We apply them to cells in a petri dish and then apply them to animals, and then if it is safe and ethical to do so we apply them to humans to be sure. In this case we can't do that last one (humans) because it wouldn't be safe or ethical based on the results of the animal studies.

Anyway, in both cases studied (in vitro and in animals), annonacin causes damage to the cells in a way that could cause atypical Parkinson's. The study on asminia triloba also confirmed that it wasn't just the purified annonacin but the raw fruit extract that can cause the damage.

There doesn't appear to be a debate at the research level, at all, about whether annonacin can cause damage to neurons. The only question is whether or not enough of it gets into the bloodstream from achievable ingestion to cause the pathology. EDIT: Sorry, I think on re-read I misunderstood that this was what you were specifically referring to, that you feel it's a leap to assumptions about ingested effects. I'd agree except that you've got these cases/clusters of atypical parkinsonism popping up and that we know that IF the chemical gets into the bloodstream then it can damage neurons (from the rat studies).

In the study I looked at from Guadeloupe, the use of Annona fruit and teas was determined by a usage questionnaire to the patients as I remember.
Not sure how accurate that would be, people could easily exaggerate their use to explain their symptoms or downplay their use to avoid responsibility.

I went back and checked the main Guadeloupe study, and they had a double-blind and a similar-demographics-but-no-Parkinson's control group on the questionnaire to prevent that kind of bias (they also included a screen for the control group for Parkinson's). Food questionnaires are pretty unreliable, sure, but if you have a proper control and double-blind then a relative difference can still be seen if you have a big enough number of participants.

Otherwise it is known that some plants in the group have insecticidal properties. ( Annona Squamosa and Annona Muricata seed ).

Those insecticidal chemicals (the acetogenins which include annonacin) are also found in the fruit and other plant parts of muricata, squamosa, a. triloba, and mucosa per a couple of different studies linked in this thread.

Back in an older thread on the forums (https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=20267.0), NullZero linked to an FDA review that had different known amounts:




I'd take some of these with a grain of salt since they used different extraction methods for some of those, and that paw paw study indicated that you could undershoot by quite a lot depending on the extraction method and temperature. That said, another meta-study I came across couldn't find any acetogenins (the compounds that annonacin is one of) in atemoya flesh samples at all (as opposed to plenty in the seeds), so this chart might be accurate that they're very low in the flesh (as opposed to the seeds). The huge range of soursop values (all done with the same extraction method) depending on location sure suggests that cultivar or environment might have a very large effect on the values even in-species.

I can't find anything about cherimoya or sugar apple, which is surprising since those are getting pretty common (hell, I think there's cherimoya at the corner market near me in Phoenix right now). Not sure anyone has looked at those, but I'd be interested to hear about it if anyone else finds any research on those. Seems like the potential range might be huge from species to species, and I feel a little safer about eating the atemoya parents now, I guess.

Is it really five time per cacao seed?  Maybe on etsy that would be the case?! ha ha ha.  If I get, the seed I'll usually sell around a buck a piece.  Fruit can't be shipped to mainland (idk about Puerto Rico...different rules compared to Hawaii re: shipping to mainland). 

Cupuassu, we have them here, but not super common. I can only think of 5-6 guys that have it fruiting. But i'm sure there are more growing here and there in the islands.

Yeah, etsy's rampant seedflation has been a thing recently, but also viable macambo seems to be legit rare in the states compared to a lot of other stuff.

I've seen people grow them up palms out here without problem (afaik, maybe they can't seem to climb palm leaves) but they'll choke out other plants. I planted one too close to an orange tree and it was intentionally growing to cover the tree leaves.

This research seems to be based around electrically generating a magnetic field with equipment.

Yeah, in all cases showing benefit in the linked studies, afaik the researchers were using it as a pre-treatment similar conceptually to various kinds of soaking pre-treatment (i.e. like a low% hydrogen peroxide bath and not, like, setting it up on a hydrogen peroxide continual drip). It was all low-frequency static fields at relatively low strengths. EDIT: Also it didn't always show greater plant mass depending on the treatment. No bueno if it's similar to that "using too much GA3" thing where it might increase the germination rate but you end up with etiolated rather than stronger plants, although the root growth differences in the beans study is impressive.

When I lived in the Hippy Capital of Australia, it was well known that Basalt dust was a benefit to garden soils.
The local council had to put tar into the blue basalt gravel for roadworks to stop it being pinched for gardens,
and probably being used on "Pot Holes" that were not actually in the road surface, but hidden in the forest.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=paramagnetism+seed+gremination&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

I'll check that out later.

I do use quite a bit of (mostly local) basalt in soil mixes now and I believe that I've been getting better results from it but chalk that up to the minerals. Our soil here can be total butts when it comes to freely available nutrients.

time for a praying mantis

Lol, some actually got loose in the house from the garden, but I moved them all back outside because I was afraid of stepping on one at 3 AM in the dark. Germinating seeds outside trades the gnats for other problems, notably skinks occasionally digging my seeds up (but also taking care of real fun pests we get out here like bark scorpions).

I recently germinated giant mulchi seeds. I like to use a paper towel and change it every so often so I can see the progress of the seed. 5 out of 6 germinated (one was rotted). Once my seeds germinate I immediately put them in clean soil. All of them came up but then I moved them outside and they rotted back so I put them under grow lights with a humidity cover and 4 of the 5 came back. For my others seeds I like to just put them in dirt, it’s easy and cheap. I have found it’s better to germinate indoors with more temperature control.

I lost 4 out of 6 mulchi seedlings to moisture issues last year too, they seem pretty touchy about it. The two that survived are doing pretty well in our negative-humidity desert air and a pot of Fox Farms Coco-Loco, though. I've been using that mix or a personal coir heavy mix for every first up-pot (except for the jaboticaba and anything that shows salt sensitivity) due to the plants show less fungal issues. Root rot is a real issue in the summer out here.