Author Topic: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)  (Read 3313 times)

lajos93

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Or 10 thousands of seeds from the hardiest of avocadoes of all times (Joey, Fantastic, Lila etc.. )

Can we go down another half a zone maybe to reach Zone 7b, or a solid Zone 8a plant with natural selection and 7-10 years?
Is anyone doing this already?
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CarolinaZone

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2023, 05:30:36 AM »
My guess is yes. As far as I know that is how the Soviets did it.  I don't think you could do it in less than 40 years though.

lajos93

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2023, 12:49:07 PM »
Why would it take 40 years? Is one generation not enough when a strong enough genetic mutation occurs?
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Pandan

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2023, 03:32:02 PM »
https://experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/36

there is a project like this on experimental farm network that may be of interest

drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2023, 04:33:38 PM »
https://experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/36

there is a project like this on experimental farm network that may be of interest

That's me! I'm happy to answer questions, but we're only distributing trees around the U.S. side of the Salish Sea (though a few of our members on Vancouver Island are planning to try to get trees inspected to bring over the border).

The list of grafted varieties is here, but we're still in the very early stages of the project so most of these are first- and second-leaf grafts. You can click the other buttons to see the seedlings and rooted cuttings so far, but the "winter survivors" list has not yet been updated since last year because most of the trees outside are barely beginning bud break, so it'll be clearer in a month or two which ones have made it.

drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2023, 04:47:35 PM »
Why would it take 40 years? Is one generation not enough when a strong enough genetic mutation occurs?

It will likely take decades (plural) because you aren't likely to find extreme hardiness in your first generation, but if you're lucky you'll find a handful of "somewhat hardier than their parents" seedlings. Then, you'll need to cross *those* with each other and plant hundreds or thousands of their seedlings to find new seedlings slightly hardier than their parents, and continue that process until you have some that are hardy enough for your goals.

Under ideal conditions, avocado seedlings fruit in as little as 4 years, but probably closer to 10 years or more in the kind of stressful climate we're talking about for this kind of trial.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2023, 04:50:21 PM by drymifolia »

lajos93

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2023, 06:37:57 AM »
@drymifolia

Awesome project, I get it that you only sell in the US, even if you did sell to Europe I think those plants in containers are a lot more vulnerable to cold damage, so its kinda pointless to containerize them

I wanna start some sort of a project like this in my country as well, and involve a bunch of highly enthusiastic people :D

Are those seedling that you got currently (50 plants) originate from the hardiest mexican parents (Lila, Joey, Fantastic ) or where did you get them from?
I think the problem is really getting all those seeds even in the US
Let alone getting them to Europe, If I could somehow get my hands on 10000 seeds of the hardiest Mexican avocadoes, thatd be probably the best way to start
Do you think there is a way to do that in the US? Im talking really large quantities, at least 500-1000 seeds or even more, but only from the hardiest named varieties

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Enkis

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2023, 07:49:51 AM »
https://experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/36

there is a project like this on experimental farm network that may be of interest

That's me! I'm happy to answer questions, but we're only distributing trees around the U.S. side of the Salish Sea (though a few of our members on Vancouver Island are planning to try to get trees inspected to bring over the border).

The list of grafted varieties is here, but we're still in the very early stages of the project so most of these are first- and second-leaf grafts. You can click the other buttons to see the seedlings and rooted cuttings so far, but the "winter survivors" list has not yet been updated since last year because most of the trees outside are barely beginning bud break, so it'll be clearer in a month or two which ones have made it.
This is a really interesting project. I might be able to join in the future (i'm in EU though). Were you already able to identify the most cold hardy between the existing cutivars?
Keep planting and nobody explodes

shot

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2023, 09:12:32 AM »
If you plant 10 of thousands of seed it will show results in 10 years or less .With that many seed you will skip the decades!!

pagnr

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #9 on: April 16, 2023, 10:44:22 AM »
I think you would be better to get scions of the most cold hardy varieties and cross pollinate them to maximise the tolerance factors from all parents into the seedlings.

lajos93

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #10 on: April 16, 2023, 11:08:15 AM »
@pagnr
thats actually my plan, the thing is though that I barely got my hands on a few small named varieties of those cold hardy plants. So now I have to get those to fruit then plant their seeds, so not in a near future to say the least

Unless I find a way to get those seeds from someone already, but I dont think its realistic to expect anyone to have those seeds especially in that quantity :D
We'll see, im on it

See ya in a decade :D
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drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2023, 12:08:36 PM »
@drymifolia

Awesome project, I get it that you only sell in the US, even if you did sell to Europe I think those plants in containers are a lot more vulnerable to cold damage, so its kinda pointless to containerize them

We aren't selling the trees, we are only distributing them freely to local members, and they are only in containers for the first year or two while waiting to be distributed to members to be planted in the ground. The small container trees are brought into the greenhouse for bad freezes, but I do leave them out for the first few mild frosts in the fall to help cull the most extremely frost sensitive among them.

Quote
Are those seedling that you got currently (50 plants) originate from the hardiest mexican parents (Lila, Joey, Fantastic ) or where did you get them from?
I think the problem is really getting all those seeds even in the US
Let alone getting them to Europe, If I could somehow get my hands on 10000 seeds of the hardiest Mexican avocadoes, thatd be probably the best way to start
Do you think there is a way to do that in the US? Im talking really large quantities, at least 500-1000 seeds or even more, but only from the hardiest named varieties

No one grows these cultivars in the kind of quantities you're talking about seeking. In the first 2 years of our project I've managed to get about 200 seeds of allegedly hardy cultivars. If you click on the "seedlings" list for the trees, you can see all the seedlings currently still marked as alive, and each one says what the seed parent cultivar is:

https://www.drymifolia.org/trees.php?subset=seedlings

So far the hardiest among the early seedlings are Duke and Aravaipa, but this year we're growing a bunch of new cultivar seeds like Del Rio & Joey for the first time, so those will be distributed starting about one year from now.

I think you would be better to get scions of the most cold hardy varieties and cross pollinate them to maximise the tolerance factors from all parents into the seedlings.

This is the long-term plan for the project. My small ~300 square ft greenhouse has five multi-graft avocado trees planted in the ground, and once those begin to produce seeds they will be the primary source for the project. I will cull any varieties that seem to have more frost-tender seedlings, but will otherwise cross-pollinate all the cultivars in the greenhouse with overlapping flowering dates.

So far this spring, Duke, Joey, "Rincon Valley" (unknown cultivar collected from a publicly accessible tree), and Walter Hole have all flowered and appear to be setting fruit (i.e., some flowers didn't fall after closing up the second time), but it's too early to know if any of them will actually hold those fruitlets to maturity. Aravaipa, Stewart, and Ganter also have buds that haven't opened yet, but only Aravaipa is big enough to hold fruit among those.

I hand pollinate 3x per day to try to catch as many as possible. Last spring the grafts were too small to support fruit so I didn't hand pollinate and no fruit set when they flowered.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2023, 12:14:38 PM by drymifolia »

drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2023, 01:51:08 PM »
If you plant 10 of thousands of seed it will show results in 10 years or less .With that many seed you will skip the decades!!

It is possible, but what you're hoping for in that kind of trial (an extreme mutation in about 0.01% of seedlings) seems a lot harder to achieve than combining as many unrelated hardy cultivars as you can, since they may each have different genes causing them to be hardy. Combining and recombining successive generations (traditional breeding methods) seems more likely to succeed than hoping for a single-generation extreme mutation, though yes either one can succeed, as Swingle showed with citrus and the Soviet breeding programs showed with various things.

shot

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2023, 03:37:49 PM »
.01% is in that range for success.Even with control breeding you will still need that range.Just do it don't let others discourage you .I don't know were in Europe you can acquire that quantity.In the SW USA near Mexico not a logistic problem.

pagnr

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #14 on: April 16, 2023, 04:10:10 PM »
Duke, Joey, "Rincon Valley" (unknown cultivar collected from a publicly accessible tree), and Walter Hole, Aravaipa, Stewart, and Ganter.

It is also interesting to consider how these varieties originated ?
Many Avocado types are chance seedlings, not from breeding programmes.
Of course we don't hear of the failures and dud seedlings so much, but there seems to also be a fair chance of random success.

lajos93

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #15 on: April 17, 2023, 03:03:02 AM »
@shot

You mean to get the hardy ones or just random seeds? I think you meant 10 thousands of random seeds. Its not bad, but if I wanted to be 99.999 sure its working the hardy ones would be needed
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Epiphyte

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #16 on: April 17, 2023, 05:45:37 AM »
Quote
An ovule is successfully fertilized by only one pollen grain out of (potentially) many thousands. If fertilization is performed at a sufficiently low temperature, the growth of chilling-resistant genotypes of pollen will be favored over others. These will reach the ovule first so that their genes will appear in the resulting seed. At no other stage of development can selection be made on such large numbers of genotypes. - Chien Yi Wang, Chilling Injury of Horticultural Crops

does anyone know whether this is true?

Enkis

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #17 on: April 17, 2023, 06:11:11 AM »
This makes sense to me but is a tree that produces chill resistant pollen also more chill resistant itself? In nature i'm sure there's a correlation because chill resistant traits will accumulate over time if they are an advantage, but with random mutations you don't get both necessarily
Keep planting and nobody explodes

shot

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #18 on: April 17, 2023, 08:18:50 AM »
In vitro cell culture subject to cold stress of the hardy cultivars could theoretically speed up the selection process

drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2023, 12:46:41 PM »
Quote
An ovule is successfully fertilized by only one pollen grain out of (potentially) many thousands. If fertilization is performed at a sufficiently low temperature, the growth of chilling-resistant genotypes of pollen will be favored over others. These will reach the ovule first so that their genes will appear in the resulting seed. At no other stage of development can selection be made on such large numbers of genotypes. - Chien Yi Wang, Chilling Injury of Horticultural Crops

does anyone know whether this is true?

I don't know if it's true, but assuming that it is true, that effect likely varies significantly from one species to another, and you would still be limited to only the range of genotypes the pollen parent can create. In other words, that effect only lets you eliminate the least cold-tolerant pollen (which may fail to develop), it doesn't create pollen that is more cold tolerant than the tree is already making anyhow.

My skeptical perspective is that genes are really complicated and interconnected, and there may be genes that will help a mature tree survive cold better that would not help the pollen to form in cold conditions. For example, an avocado tree that goes dormant early in fall is less likely to have the branch tips (next year's fruiting buds) harmed by an early frost, so you may want to select for early dormancy. But the genes that cause early dormancy might also mean the pollen won't develop in the cold! So you might be selecting for one type of cold-tolerance but eliminating other potentially helpful genotypes in the process.

That being said, I would love to see an experiment under controlled conditions (climate controlled/indoor) that tested the hardiness of avocado seedlings produced under cold flowering conditions vs the same seed & pollen parents under warm flowering conditions.

lajos93

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #20 on: April 17, 2023, 03:45:19 PM »
Has there ever been done such a long term breeding project for any trees to get the tree to adapt to a completely different climate that it was originally accustomed to?

I know that the soviets did grow lemons in a special way, they werent necessarily bred for hardiness, at least not to a significant degree..They simply made structures, set them up in a way so they dont get not even close to the temps trees there normally do get

And they did some hybridization with the oranges and others citruses, most resulted in hardy AND horrible tasting fruits.
Along side that they had more room to experiment with citruses since they have that one special rootstock (poncirus trifoliata) that has everything a citrus needs as far as compatibility is concerned YET its super HARDY

That is what Avocadoes are missing, if there was some sort of an interstem or something that allowed other Lauraceaes to be used as rootsock for avocadoes that'd speed it up big time
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drymifolia

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #21 on: April 17, 2023, 04:23:05 PM »
Has there ever been done such a long term breeding project for any trees to get the tree to adapt to a completely different climate that it was originally accustomed to?

It has been tried a lot with citrus, both by the Soviets and by Swingle, and also there's @kumin's trial you can find in the Cold-Hardy Citrus section of this forum, that's on the scale you are proposing for avocados, and does show some promise.

Quote
That is what Avocadoes are missing, if there was some sort of an interstem or something that allowed other Lauraceaes to be used as rootsock for avocadoes that'd speed it up big time

Rootstock hardiness isn't a huge problem for avocados, I've found a significant percentage of seedlings, even very young ones, will survive below ground even if they are killed above ground.

The rootstock does not impart its hardiness to the grafted variety, so for citrus it doesn't really matter that you can graft on trifoliate, since the grafted variety will still die back at the same temperature as if it's on its own roots. If anything, being on its own roots is better, since then if the roots do survive they will regrow as the desired variety rather than the rootstock.

That is one reason I've been experimenting with rooting avocado cuttings. If this project does eventually succeed, I think planting avocados on their own roots is the best idea for people trying to zone push, and I'm hoping we will eventually distribute own-root clones of any cultivars we produce in the project.

Otherwise, if you get a bad winter, you'll lose the graft. Unfortunately, avocados root very slowly and rooted cuttings grow more slowly than seedlings, at least at first (it hasn't been long enough yet for me to know if they catch up later). But as long as they do eventually grow well, the benefit of root survival seems to outweigh the downside of extra time to grow them.

Epiphyte

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2023, 07:52:01 PM »
I don't know if it's true, but assuming that it is true, that effect likely varies significantly from one species to another, and you would still be limited to only the range of genotypes the pollen parent can create. In other words, that effect only lets you eliminate the least cold-tolerant pollen (which may fail to develop), it doesn't create pollen that is more cold tolerant than the tree is already making anyhow.

My skeptical perspective is that genes are really complicated and interconnected, and there may be genes that will help a mature tree survive cold better that would not help the pollen to form in cold conditions. For example, an avocado tree that goes dormant early in fall is less likely to have the branch tips (next year's fruiting buds) harmed by an early frost, so you may want to select for early dormancy. But the genes that cause early dormancy might also mean the pollen won't develop in the cold! So you might be selecting for one type of cold-tolerance but eliminating other potentially helpful genotypes in the process.

That being said, I would love to see an experiment under controlled conditions (climate controlled/indoor) that tested the hardiness of avocado seedlings produced under cold flowering conditions vs the same seed & pollen parents under warm flowering conditions.
right now my bacon avocado is only a few feet tall but it's covered in blooms.  let's say that i store some of its pollen in the fridge.  when my russell starts to bloom later on in the year i put it in a walk in fridge with a sufficiently low temp and pollinate it with bacon's pollen.  i have no idea whether bacon's cooler growing/tolerating trait would be dominant, just like i have no idea whether russell's long neck trait would be dominant. 

i agree that successful adaptation to any new habitat involves diverse traits.  perhaps this means that, in theory, all else being equal, hybrids can adapt to new habitats faster than species can.

yesterday i consolidated around 20 of my earliest blooming tillandsias onto my lychee tree (currently very open due to recently being transplanted) in order to facilitate cross-pollination by hummingbirds and the creation of even earlier blooming tillandsias.  the tillandsias on the lychee are all different species and hybrids with considerable difference in size, shape and color.  some are dense, white, rosettes covered in trichomes while others are elongated and green.  their flowers are not equally attractive to hummingbirds and i doubt that all the tillandsias are compatible. 

if, for example, i only put my earliest blooming tillandsia aeranthos on the lychee, then they would obviously be all compatible, and i'd make progress towards even earlier blooming, but i'd be betting too much on its particular combination of traits.  for all i know their low density of trichomes is disadvantageous in my climate.  sadly i have no way to know exactly what a tillandsia perfectly adapted to my climate would look like.  therefore i hedge my bets as much as possible.

i basically try to give nature materials to work with, and then i offer my own input.  for some reason dialectical materialism came to mind.  maybe it's something like dialectical naturalism.

Pandan

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #23 on: April 17, 2023, 09:38:09 PM »
So besides the tex-mex avocados does anyone have any interest in importing more drymifolia/criollo genetics?

this user had listed a vendor of criollo but didn't pursue it: https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=31994.msg353314#msg353314 - perhaps they could be contacted and someone familiar with live plant permits could import some

there's also a seller offering criollo seeds on etsy (naretmx)

Oh and another one for the tex-mmex genetics: "austin star avocado", its expensive as hell though
user's post https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=44004.0
OG nursery selling it (tw sticker shock): https://lonestarnursery.com/products/avocado-austin-star

Edit: Here's a nursery in WA doing trials with criollo (idk if related to drymifolia) ttps://johannsgarden.square.site/product/persea-americana-var-drymifolia-almost-hardy-criollo-avocado-aguacate-criollo/423?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=false&category_id=3
« Last Edit: April 17, 2023, 09:54:35 PM by Pandan »

Pandan

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Re: Planting 1000s of seeds from the cold hardiest avocados (experiment)
« Reply #24 on: April 17, 2023, 09:48:40 PM »

I think the problem is really getting all those seeds even in the US
Let alone getting them to Europe, If I could somehow get my hands on 10000 seeds of the hardiest Mexican avocadoes, thatd be probably the best way to start
Do you think there is a way to do that in the US? Im talking really large quantities, at least 500-1000 seeds or even more, but only from the hardiest named varieties

I don't know about in the US but if someone really was invested then as another user said they could do something akin to what Kumin is doing for citranges by buying rootstock seed wholesale, planting and looking what survives and variation among them:

https://www.viverosblanco.com/en/rootstocks - mexicola and "water-hole" seed

https://www.invertebral.mx/product/mexican-avocado-pattern-creole-seed/ - criollo seed and if dryfolia is commonly used at rootstock someone with better google-fu and spanish mastery than me could probably find a nursery in MX that specializes in seed stock

« Last Edit: April 17, 2023, 09:50:17 PM by Pandan »