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« on: February 12, 2024, 08:38:11 PM »
a_Vivaldi:
At the moment I have hand-pollinated fruits of these hybrids on the plant (of course they can still fall off):
NZ Grapefruit x Calamansi
NZ Grapefruit x sweet (low acid, edible peel) rough lemon
In both cases, the goal is to have the edible peel of the pollen parents, while retaining the sweet flesh of the NZ Grapefruit and maybe even reduce the bitterness further (it's already not a problem, but I know most people don't like bitter fruit). The fruit should also become smaller in both cases, which may make it a bit faster to ripen. Otherwise maybe a good marmalade fruit could be the result.
SoCal2warm:
No I would definitely say it's very different to Seville orange. Seville orange is far too sour to eat the flesh of (at least the ones I tried), unless you are one of those crazy people. NZ Grapefruit is as sweet as an orange when fully ripe (it will hang on the tree for months after being ripe, gathering ,ore sweetness), with only a mild bitterness (much less than true grapefruit). I have made marmalade from both Seville orange and NZ Grapefruit (using the same recipe), and the NZ Grapefruit marmalade is far sweeter, but also more runny. The peels also disintegrated much more in the NZ Grapefruit marmalade vs Seville, so that was another interesting factor, it reminded me a slightly bitter honey. The fruit size is also very different, with NZ Grapefruit being almost twice the size of a Seville orange on average.
We don't have any Japanese varieties apart from the usual mandarins and Yuzu, so I can't compare to Natsudaidai. I think it might also be similar to Sanbokan, which is described as a mixture of orange and grapefruit flavour.
I have been told that there are some oranges with quite edible peels, such as Xian Feng Cheng. Not yet tested it myself.