Question about breeding annona hybrids

[elriba]

I wanted to ask something about breeding annona hybrids.

I imagine that the process is something like this:
(1) cross-polinization to produce the hybrid,
(2) harvest fruits to collect seeds of the new hybrid,
(3) plant the hybrid seeds,
(4) when the new hybrid plantings are of the appropiate size, graft them onto older wood to obtain  fruits faster and see what you've got…

My question is this:  What is the recommended age/size of the plantings where you can proceed to graft them?

[dwfl]

Hybrids generally have good vigor. In Miami you could just give them a season of growing and then graft them when they're getting close to pushing again. That way if your graft fails you still have a decent sized hybrid stock that will grow again.

[elriba]

Thanks!

[dwfl]

Once you pollinate it may be a good idea to put a screen or other similar material around the hybridized flowers to ensure no other pollen gets to those flowers.

[Eggo]

Just my opinion and observation from some fun experiments I made in the past.  The challenge may be pollinating from the different species and having pollen at the right time.  For example, i was never ever able to get an ilama flower to take cherimoya/atemoya pollens.  Also I would say you could skip #4 if you are trying to get fruit sooner.  But do it if you lack the space.  If you have plenty of land just plant it all out.  The reason is it seems most Annonas bloom easily and early.  If this was a genus/species that took like 10 years to bloom/fruit i could see the need to graft onto an older tree.

Although these weren't cross species hybrids I done step 4 .  I used 4 cherimoya seedlings and an ilama seedling which i had in pots.  I was doing this in my backyard and this was my experience.  It took about 2 years to get a good size scion to graft onto a mature in ground cherimoya.  After grafting, the first year no bloom that's pretty obvious. 2nd year also no bloom. The 3rd year for me was when it usually bloomed.  So i may have saved myself a year or two vs planting the seeds out.  Cherimoyas here takes like 5 years, maybe 7 at worst to bloom and fruit from seeds.  Atemoyas  may bloom a little earlier. Sugar apples bloom so early like in 2-3 years, just here in socal they grow much slower to not have the structure to support the fruit that early.

As for the experiment, none of it yielded what I was trying to achieve ahaha. These were from Dr. White store bought fruits and I wanted a firm texture large size cherimoya fruit. I got all very soft custardly flesh fruits that had smooth skin. Since it's from a commercial operation I think the pollinating parent may been Honey Heart.  I only kept 1 cherimoya from this experiment as it produced very large size fruits with thick smooth skin almost looks like a green reticulata but less uniform.  It's incredible sweet, too sweet i would say.  Unfortunately, it's produces a very soft custardly flesh fruit.  My family prefers the firm texture of an atemoya.  I kept it out of curiosity although not for our taste I could definitely see this taste/texture profile suitable for others.  As for the ilama seedling, cool fruit and flowers but I cut it down several years back, it never produce anything worthwhile in my climate and I did not enjoy the texture.

[elriba]

@Eggo, thanks for sharing your annona adventures.  Very interesting!