Citrus pollination methods to create hybrids

[citrange]

pagnr - a member of this forum in Australia - sent me a useful pdf article about pollination of citrus to produce hybrids. It was written some years ago by Steve Sykes who developed several Australian native hybrids such as the Red Centre Lime (previously Blood lime) and the Sunrise Lime.
View at: Methods of Citrus pollination
Mike/Citrange

[mikkel]

Thanks for sharing.

I often pollinate with several varieties in hope for an ammen effect.

I usually use Ichang Papeda as additional pollen, especially when pollinating with Poncirus or Poncirus hybrids. On the one hand the seedlings can be distinguished relatively well from each other and on the other hand the fruit set with I P pollen is larger than with pure Poncirus or Poncirus hybrid pollen. Pollinations with pure pollen of poncirus hybrids had only a low success rate in my case, my impression is that it works better with a mix together with I P pollen.
Since most of my plants are still quite small and bear only a limited number of flowers and can only bear 1 or 2 fruits, I hope to reduce fruit drop in this way. For larger plants with more flowers and fruits, I pollinate in a controlled way.
Nurse pollination works especially well with parents with realtively different appearance, but with closely related varieties it might be difficult to check the success.
but so far this is only based on observations and interpretations. due to the limited number of flowers I have not yet made a falsification, which is also the reason for the nurse pollination. Classic circular reasoning

[citrange]

Mikkel - I don't completely understand what you are saying here. I have not seen any scientific reports of what you are calling 'nurse pollination' (or using the German word for nurse 'ammen effect'.)
Are you saying that mixing Poncirus and Ichang Papeda pollen results in better overall pollination and produces only Poncirus hybrids from just the Poncirus pollen in the mix? Or that you get a better total hybridisation and then can visually select the seedlings which result from the two types of pollen? I can see that if you are actually wanting to create both Poncirus and IP hybrids this would work, but I don't think adding IP pollen could help produce more Poncirus type seedlings.

[mikkel]

no, you have misunderstood me. I have only made the observation that the pollen of Ichang papeda achieves a higher success rate in fruit set (almost every time).

Pollinations with Poncirus or poncirus hybrids often resulted in aborted fruit set and had less success. I can only speculate about the reasons and it may very well be that this was just a coincidence. I have not directly compared the success rate of pollinations with Pt or ichangensis pollen in a scientific sense.

From this I only made the assumption that it could be helpful to use ichangensis pollen to first achieve a partial pollination and prevent fruit abortion, which could (I use the subjunctive on purpose) increase indirectly the chances for the poncirus pollen to also achieve some successful pollinations in parallel. The resulting seeds are of course at best a mix of ichangensis fertilized seeds and if it goes well with some poncirus fertilized seeds.
To claim otherwise would of course be nonsense.

At seed germination, the poncirus-pollinated and ichangensis-pollinated seedlings can be distinguished by the leave shape. (a similiar parent variety leave shape on the mother tree could lower the chance to find the hybrids, of course....)

I haven't read a modern scientific paper on it either, but have read about it several times. Mitchurin, among others, describes this method, although I think with a different ulterior motive, I haven't read his theory that closely. Just the title Nurse Pollination gave me the idea that such a method could be a way to increase the chances of desired pollinations, of course at the cost that it might be interpretable in the seedlings which are the desired hybrids (nucellar seeds and so on not even considered). Because I have only a few flowers and only a chance of a few fruits on each variety I take the chance to get hybrid seeds at all.
e.g. this year I have pollinated potentially precocious citrus varieties with a mix of precocious poncirus and ichangensis. if some seedlings have trifoliate leaves they are easy to recognize and I can assume success, the remaining monofoliate seedlings are then supplementary, but also hybrids with ichangensis might be interesting...
So far I have done this only with Poncirus hybrid pollen. This year I have had pure Ponciruspollen for the first time. I am eager to see what comes out.

[pagnr]

This kind of mixing pollen is used by other plant breeders, trying to cross distant relatives that normally don't cross ( Orchid hybrids , Bulb hybrids etc )
Mixing two pollens seems to allow the reception to occur with the right pollen, and the foreign pollen can sneak a ride in.
Also mixing attenuated pollen ( dead ) of the receptive species with live pollen of the desired donor species can also be similarly successful.
I first heard about this in this book.
Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving, Carol Deppe.
www.amazon.com.au/Breed-Your-Own-Vegetable-Varieties-ebook/dp/B001F7BFB0

[pagnr]

This fact is also highly interesting.

"Okitsu originated as a nucellar seedling of Miyagawa from a controlled pollination with Poncirus trifoliata"
Nucellar means it is not a cross. The PT pollen is used to induce seed formation.

It was posted here on the forum
citrusgrowersv2.proboards.com/thread/930/okitsu-wase-miho-poncirus-heritage

[jibro]

I realized this year that using poncirus as seed parent is a lot easier for manual pollination thanks to the bigger distance of anthem from pistil in poncirus flowers and poncirus holding fruitlet more reliable than true citrus varieties.

It is kind of frustrating when you manually pollinated hundreds of flowers and 99% drop later...
I know from the previous year that my Flying Dragon can produce hybrids as the seed parent, I am testing all my flowering poncirus in containers this year, I pollinated each poncirus plant with only one variety, so labeling is also easier.
I have 4 poncirus plants pollinated with Ichangstar 60, Ichang papeda Ivia, Yuzu N1-754, Sikeri acidless orange, and my Flying Dragon with Ichangstar 60, Ivia, N1 Tri Voss, Chandler.

I also pollinated Fast Flowering Trifoliate, half flowers with Ivia, half with N1 Tri Voss.

Poncirus in containers may sound weird but it is allow hide plant  from late frost or from heavy rain after pollination and also some timing to delay or speed up flowering if you need synchronise it with true citrus, poncirus plants in containers are also smaller and have less flowers, so it is easy to pollinate every flower.

[kumin]

Excellent points regarding the ability to manipulate flowering times on containerized Citrus. Selecting the largest, complete flowers as seed parents, then removing smaller, less developed flowers should improve the probability of the pollinated flowers to set and remain until maturity.

Poncirus seediness is also a bonus, even when nucellar are taken into account, as the large number of seeds compensate for inefficiency of apomixis.

[till]

Jibro, good combinations you tried. I hope you succeeed.

[tedburn]

May 27, 2022 2:37:14 GMT -5 jibro said:

I realized this year that using poncirus as seed parent is a lot easier for manual pollination thanks to the bigger distance of anthem from pistil in poncirus flowers and poncirus holding fruitlet more reliable than true citrus varieties.

It is kind of frustrating when you manually pollinated hundreds of flowers and 99% drop later...
I know from the previous year that my Flying Dragon can produce hybrids as the seed parent, I am testing all my flowering poncirus in containers this year, I pollinated each poncirus plant with only one variety, so labeling is also easier.
I have 4 poncirus plants pollinated with Ichangstar 60, Ichang papeda Ivia, Yuzu N1-754, Sikeri acidless orange, and my Flying Dragon with Ichangstar 60, Ivia, N1 Tri Voss, Chandler.

I also pollinated Fast Flowering Trifoliate, half flowers with Ivia, half with N1 Tri Voss.

Poncirus in containers may sound weird but it is allow hide plant  from late frost or from heavy rain after pollination and also some timing to delay or speed up flowering if you need synchronise it with true citrus, poncirus plants in containers are also smaller and have less flowers, so it is easy to pollinate every flower.

Very interesting crossing combinations - are there already some seedlings of your crosses, some pictures and first results  .
Best regards 
Frank 

[jibro]

I have a lot of seedlings that keep growing in one container, I need to sort them out.
Fast Trifoliate and Poncirus pollinated with Yuzu have had no fruits, most of the hybrids I have are from FD x Ivia and FD x Chandler crosses.
I have maybe 1 to 3 hybrid seedlings from PT x Chandler, PT x Ichangstar and PT x Ivia, FD as a seed parent has certainly a higher percentage of hybrids than PT...
FD x Ivia were easily recognizable soon after germination, they first had 3-4 large unifoliate leaves and then they started to grow trifoliate leaves with a large petiole as you can see in the photo...

[lia]

May 24, 2022 13:25:29 GMT -5 citrange said:

pagnr - a member of this forum in Australia - sent me a useful pdf article about pollination of citrus to produce hybrids. It was written some years ago by Steve Sykes who developed several Australian native hybrids such as the Red Centre Lime (previously Blood lime) and the Sunrise Lime.
View at: Methods of Citrus pollination
Mike/Citrange

Thanks!