I've been adding Pawpaw cultivars to my repository for a couple of years and considering putting one in the ground. I've also been studying previous work on genetic ID and known ancestry records of U.S. breeds. Here's a large scale ancestry graph I developed mostly from Peterson's seminal 2003 article (Pawpaw variety development: a history and future prospects. HortTechnology, 13, 449-454), plus a few others for details and cross-check. You'll need to zoom in to read the details.
I have two pawpaw offsprings of 'Rebecca'. From the leaves and stems I have been making a water based mix (brine) and found this to kill insects of types and little slugs that might be nematodes. I do this every so often when I see wiggling life in standing water and it works. The pawpaw brine idea started a long time ago reading what a medical group had been doing when trying to register topic head lice shampoo. The author claimed that certain highly potent cultivars were identified. I have no idea if mine Rebecca offsprings are highly potent.
If everyone that plants trees for a garden were too simply do half of what you do (ie. keep track of cultivar names) then finding things that are more resistant (for the purposes of further breeding) we would be well on our way to re-introducing our now lost trade of prune exporting the way we used to west of the Cascades. The idea of prune can apply to almost anything or any kind of tree that takes a long time between generations to breed. So congradulations!
I must wonder if any of them you grow are most 'potently superior' over others?
Similar to nicotine from tabacco plants right? So will the many subjects that the USDA has books about, as you refer to, will they invoke a broad spectrum response like a pawpaw or tabacco?
Many attacks on a plant involve effectors that are injected into a plant by Hemipteran insects or Phytoplasma (per Saskia Hogenhout) in an attempt to enslave a plant. The possible promise that people like her that may some day advance plant medicine to circumvent effectors in the future look promising, but I think thus far that it is the ground dwelling microbes that are involved as well.
So other than all the above benefits of a healthy biome in the root system or anywhere else makes me think that we as a group can try to make a backyard success of ourselves through the possible discovering of which of the broad spectrum compounds used by plants can be safe for us and other beneficials.
So the question that I had still is: Can we Identify any particular known cultivars that are known by the establishments (per Peterson etc.) offering more robustness as far as the highest level is concerned - the highest level of repellents (broad spectrum) like certain tobacco plant clones are known for?
Footsox for pawpaws are never required but are for apples and Japanese pears (the latter for which I love). When I used a stronger white drainage fabric from Home Depot last year the pear was the biggest on the tree. This could mean that if I were to apply a pawpaw brine to the material that I will (by the end of the day) be eating all the brine.
Rooney, here's a few things that might help you.
"the possible discovering of which of the broad spectrum compounds used by plants can be safe for us and other beneficials"
Beneficials do not belong to a separable class of organisms (or compounds if the term is broadened to include substances). Further, a beneficial of one plant can be the pest of another. As Muir wrote: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Consequently I try to be specific in the selection, timing, and rotation of pesticides to suppress non-beneficials among my plants. For example, right now in my locale it is prime time for citrus leaf miner adults to inject eggs into soft emerging leaves. But many of the citrus are blooming now too, attracting bees. So I use spirotetramat and apply it at sundown when the bees have gone home.
The research of chemical compounds from plants for use against non-beneficials has been going in earnest at both academic and corporate institutions for about 200 years. There are 100's of 1000's of peer-reviewed articles on the subject and entire research centers devoted to it throughout the world.
"offering more robustness as far as the highest level is concerned"
Here you touch on the fact that dosage is key. For example, just because Neem contains a few molecules per mole of an insect toxin does not mean it is an effective toxin in raw form. It is though an excellent natural surfactant.
In addition to concentration within a species or cultivar, another factor to consider is ease of extraction, i.e. is the chemical more soluble or easier to extract from one than another?
Just my 2¢.
I never meant that nicotine is "a beneficial" as a group of things at all. My pointers towards using the external article had been done to convey your confidence that even though we here don't have the same tickets from colleges you have, that we still have enough ideas to share between ourselves.
I liked the message on figs the other day on another topic of figs as far as the term "drift" when it comes to TC. When I read that I kind of remembered discussing why tissue cultured bush cherries that the gardeners group in Alaska bought through me ended up sour for the most part. This happened around 2005-06 when I guess drift wasn't really taught very well. Sometimes the wheels turn slowly but eventually after more knowledge about plant plasticity and the importance of protocols - sooner or later things in the end work out.
Same thing on Maxima-14 hybrid cherry. Purchased same 2005-06 as an experimental a bunch of them. Again they were hybrids as before with the bush cherries but the Maxima-14 bunch ended up healthy because they originally existed naturally at the Lewelling brothers farm here in the same valley. Each of them (of the 10 maxima-14 that I started with) varied. Most were sterile but many different leaf shapes and those that flowered had varied flower types.
Long story short -I went outside today and found my last two that I wanted to investigate further in order to find possibilities breeding them further. I must upload for a viewing of the differences even though it drifts away from where we started out so I hope it's still good. 
This is the consistently late flowering [first], then joined in with the early flowering form of Maxima-14 [last].
(All DNA is exactly the same) These are also cut branches from today for demonstration.
First: Very few cherries, only a few every second year, never any pollen from flowers.
Second: As unproductive as the first. Pollen is available from flowers.
Maxima-14 probably needs a DNA exam to determine parental information. If sweet cherry crossed with prunus mahaleb per patent info then that's what it is. I suspect sour cherry is the proper parent rather than sweet because Prunus mahaleb never overlap flowers here in the valley with sweet cherry types.
Is this the kind of phenotype drift that's seen in figs? (assuming per topic pawpaws are not tissue cultured)
People's education "tickets" have never been an issue with me, but on frequent occasion I have taken issue with their sources of information. My recent publication about fig cultivars at NCGR Davis is a testimony to that.
A couple decades ago Ira Flatow did a radio piece about a construction worker who became obsessed with collecting the works of the journey of Lewis and Clark. In the end the state built a reading room for him and his collection - and he is now considered a leading authority on the subject.
Anyway, in my next post I'm returning to Pawpaw ancestries with a smaller diagram limited to cultivars currently in circulation.
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