The Tropical Fruit Forum

Many plant nurseries are growing on short term cycles ( weeks or months ) for sale and using fungicides to get the plants to sale in very fine pot mixes.
Most growers are growing in pots for several years or more. The requirements are different.
Pot media will break down over time via the "composting" process into finer particles. This will reduce air capacity and drainage.
Bigger particle sizes slow this down, but must be balanced with water holding capacity.
Soils in pots have no structure or vary fine structure. Soils in the ground are not confined in a container and the earth below acts as a buffer.
Raised soil garden beds, bottomless drums or pots of soil or mounds and furrows or terraces in a field all work well, where soil is raised but not fully confined.
Soil in pots works for some plants, usually those that thrive on neglect.

The drying is going to vary seasonally, winter / summer and also as the plant grows and extracts more water.
No mix is 100% perfect for all these stages, but many are wrong for all.
If Soil is more water holding it may work well for a small plant in mild weather, but fail when more water is needed in hot weather and also hold too much water in winter in cool dull weather.
The 5 1 1 type mixes can be better managed for water holding vs drainage.

To me the CSIRO classification of it as S malaccanse seams strange. It looks to be different enough to be classified it's own species.

Many plants when classified by the key system will fall into a species. In this case it must key out as malaccense.
Maybe DNA analysis might show unseen differences to either confirm or seperate ?
Syzygium aqueum also occurs in Cape York, but the fruit are not as big as the cultivated types from SE Asia.

Transgenetic is the answer?

If you could identify the greening resistant genes and pop them into a Navel Orange etc without changing other fruit characters that could work.
Otherwise you could hybridise with resistant Citrus, but most likely the fruit would be slightly unusual.
If you did enough hybrids, maybe 2nd generation, you should get something that would pass as an orange or for juice purposes.
Otherwise change to new Citrus types, greening resistant types like Finger Lime.
That could work, replacing your morning " OJ " with a glass of "FL", except that Florida is also FL, co CA Citrus Farmers might get upset with that ?
Also here in Australia it would be "AuFL", except that our football league is the AFL, and it also sounds a bit like awful.

For Sports Fans here are some great AFL moments of 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA7yHReFqJchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA7yHReFqJc

https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-64472234
"Echium gentianoides is rare, being confined to La Palma in the Canary Islands, and classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable due to browsing and predation by goats and other invasive species.

Oaks are not native here in Australia, and not that common except in parks in cities. I am more inland and not sure I have seen any here.
Any advice as to what species are used for greening protection ?
Think the experiment was with Live Oak, anybody growing Citrus with other species ?
Spanish Cork Oak may grow here, or maybe American Oak species "Out of the South and Texas Too" ?

The Oak treatment sounds interesting, possibly the research can't be commercialised as anyone can grow under oaks or make oak leaf tea.
Maybe that put it on the back burner, unless a specific Oak chemical was isolated and marketed as a treatment.
Still that wouldn't stop the simpler treatment version being used.
A peptide from greening resistant Fingerlimes is also being investigated as a treatment.
Some research into Fingerlime Citrus hybrids, or other Citrus hybrids that have higher resistance is also going on.

Some years ago I was in a local Vietnamese grocery and noticed they had a Pummelo in the small Buddhist Shrine in the shop.
I was in a rush, and also didn't want to be disrespectful about the offering in the shrine, so didn't ask about the Pummelo.
About a week later, I was back in the shop, and asked the Lady owner if they sold Pummelos ?
There was a language barrier, as the word Pummelo is not Vietnamese, and also I thought the word for it was Nam, because one of the Vietnamese types is Nam Roi.
Anyway, it went back and forth for a while, me making fruit sizes with my hand for Lime, Orange, Grapefruit, which made sense to both of us, but crashed at Nam.
The Lady was helpful, and suggested I come back after school when her son was working and he could translate.
I tried the hand gestures and Citrus types again.
Finally it clicked for her, and she said '' Ah, you mean Buoi "
Then it clicked for me too, and I remembered that was the Vietnamese word for Pummelo.
We were both happy with the breakthrough, and the Lady said the Pummelo fruit should be back in on Tuesday or Wednesday.
I still wanted to be sure about when to come back in,
so I asked " When will you get the Buoi in the shop" ?
The Lady quickly replied,
"He comes back after three thirty, after school"

I am still working on my pronunciation of Buoi.
Only last week I was walking in my neighbourhood, and noticed an elderly lady in her garden with six 2 metre pummelo trees along her fence.
We chatted, and I asked about the Buoi trees, to which she quickly corrected my pronunciation to one she was happier with.
She said the trees were Pink types grown from seed.
I had seen them often while driving, but never noticed any fruit yet.

info on the Australian type malaccense
https://apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/entities/syzygium_malaccense.htm

You can also search other Australian Syzygiums on this site. A few have purple fruit, but malaccense could be right.

It could be an interesting one as a rootstock for the better fruiting types from SE Asia. It should be a little tougher, for people wanting to growth further south.
That is one that I never found wild in FNQ, only the cultivated types.

What is the foliage it is resting on ? Is that the plant it came off ?

As I understanf it, there are no buds below the cotyledons. I believe that it is possible for a bud to regenerate from callus tissue, however, this takes time and there won't be enough energy in the seedling to support it that long unless it is in tissue culture media.

Apart from the agar gel, the tissue culture medium has nutrients. Anyone think you could supply the nutrients to seed raising mix.
Most seed mixes have fertiliser, but the TC nutrients are more tailored ?
Since the seedling is green it can photosynthesise, increasing the lighting duration and intensity may help it push through.
The Citrus general discussion had a topic on feeding albino seedlings with nutrients ( sugars ) to keep them going for a while longer than normal.
Any thoughts on plant hormones to stimulate bud formation.

Yes I have heard of it but never eaten it. I have been to Tokyo, but did not find it in shops. It is famous from Nagasaki area ?

It works so well that here on a sunny cold day it’s -30f outside and over 80f (26c) inside.

How do you go with condensation drip or ice formation on the inside roof ? It is a problem here with frost in unheated plastic tunnels at below zero.