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Seedling vs Seedling from an original Grafter plant ?
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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 23, 2019 - 10:49 pm

Hi,

Case 1. I have an adult original pure breed mango plant over 100+ years old i want to take its seed and grow it. lets call it X

 

Case 2. There is another mango tree of the same breed like X hower it was previously grafted  ontop of an unknown specie of mango tree lets call it Y.

So this means this tree is X grafted on Y

 

My questions.

1. If I were to grow seeds from Case 1 and Case 2 which seeds are of better quality ? or will there be no difference in quality ? the reason i ask this is I see alot of people buyng grafted plants and some dont even last 15 yrs while the pure breeds last for centuries and grow extremely large. Also the grafted plants are more prone to diseases. 

 

By the way this is done in Africa/Tanzania

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Viron
1400 Posts
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August 24, 2019 - 11:29 am

There should be no difference, the rootstock of case 2 will not have changed the genes of it’s top cultivator.  

Some fruit produce offspring closer, or truer to the parent fruit than others.  I’ve no idea how “true to seed” a mango is. But unless grafted to another rootstock, any seed will have blended it’s genes with whatever pollinated it, resulting in different characteristics than the parent fruit...   

If you want identical specimens, I’d suggest grafting them to a rootstock, as was done with “Case 2,” or consider rooting one from a cutting.  Rootstock is developed to withstand biological attacks that could eventually kill a tree developed from only a cutting. That’s why I’d graft about any Northern Hemisphere fruit tree, with only a fig being a viable and proven specimen from a cutting (with no rootstock).

You mention grafted trees dying earlier ... I wonder if they were grafted to a very restrictive rootstock; restricting the nutrients to the cultivar above in order to achieve a dwarfing affect for a smaller tree?  That might account for the earlier deaths if they’re trading longevity for manageable size. 

If so, grafting your cultivars to a wild tree or standard rootstock - and not to a developed dwarfing rootstock may give you a longer lived tree.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
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August 24, 2019 - 11:34 am

The question is a very interesting one of which will be pondered for generations to come because we really don't understand the whole picture yet, and I like your question.

The differing habits of new species Y can influence habits in X, in turn some of the inheritance of habits will transfer through seed, but you did not say if X is naturally producing selfed seeds. So everything forward will assume the "X" in question of inheritance are in each case -selfed seeds.

The X should carry the pure seed breeds, and the X/Y should carry almost the same purity, other than a few habits that will be retained over time, can make them differ slightly, or lots if Y is from a vasly different region. Which are indeed "habits" if which can move upwards from the rootstock (case-2). Habits are a constantly changing thing to compensate (eg environmental conditions) and therefore plant Y will have impressed some changes that X will remember from Y. These impressions are known to be passed on to the seeds but they are also known to diminish over time of experiencing different environments. 

One modern example of fitting into an environment is mung bean seed size and tomato fruit size. The tomato over the space of thousands of years have been selected by mankind for the biggest fruits and tomato.plants have developed a natural form of habit of becoming large fruiting and these same temporary habits transfer to seeds. The mung beans were experimentally grafted to tomato plants and the size of the bean had increased. When these mung beans got crossed with one another the habit of larger mung been was retained. The same thing has been well documented with apple fruits for a long time. (bulb-rose site , pearmain-apple)

Another big influence other than human selection on plants are plants always having to be adapting to location, and location is the driving force of long life of trees and the trees need to be constantly aware of habits learned from the species that is indigenous to the locality and the parents. Unfortunately it happens sometimes when the rootstock of a cold hardy apple is grafted to a southern non cold hardy apple that when the seeds get collected from the hardy apple the seeds are mostly not hardy. On the other hand if the same apple were on it's own hardy roots more seed will be hardy. The variables if habit are changing, in this case the timing duration, as science defined as "photoperiodism" and other as yet less well defined terminology. Lack of fitting into a new environment for a tree is a tree in stress and always means short life expectancy even though all the paths are as yet not documented. 

So.

Your short life syndrome in grafts may be more a problem of stresses due to graft incompatibility than changing habits in the first place. Some species of trees like chestnuts must be grafted on another of which seeds are derived from the mother tree. Chestnuts can't be grafted long to other chestnut species.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 24, 2019 - 12:55 pm

Viron: I had not seen your post even through my revisions made on mine. I last updated to provide an active link which itself is not decisive as to whom or what is right. My point of view is that so little is known if plants really adapt habits of other localities from the mere contact or long term presence mechanisms of grafting etc. I myself tend to favor my point of view that plants do not operate the same way. Experiments on cold longevity of apple clones from California that are were hardy to the conditions in Alaska but grown in Cal have proved that that they and the seeds retain hardy indeed. However with grasses hardiness is lost in 3 generations. 

Science is slow and epigenetic inheritance so new. Or Michurin's photo-periodism would not have been discounted by the universities so long until now. The plants of the same apple clones can be very different. I have done many these experiments myself to prove photo-periodism and know that it exists. I have played with peaches and consulted others regarding plant plasticity, a field that is still being unraveled, and other than plant-plasticity plants do re-assort themselves, though many do not believe.

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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 25, 2019 - 11:45 pm

Rooney said
The question is a very interesting one of which will be pondered for generations to come because we really don't understand the whole picture yet, and I like your question.

The differing habits of new species Y can influence habits in X, in turn some of the inheritance of habits will transfer through seed, but you did not say if X is naturally producing selfed seeds. So everything forward will assume the "X" in question of inheritance are in each case -selfed seeds.

The X should carry the pure seed breeds, and the X/Y should carry almost the same purity, other than a few habits that will be retained over time, can make them differ slightly, or lots if Y is from a vasly different region. Which are indeed "habits" if which can move upwards from the rootstock (case-2). Habits are a constantly changing thing to compensate (eg environmental conditions) and therefore plant Y will have impressed some changes that X will remember from Y. These impressions are known to be passed on to the seeds but they are also known to diminish over time of experiencing different environments. 

One modern example of fitting into an environment is mung bean seed size and tomato fruit size. The tomato over the space of thousands of years have been selected by mankind for the biggest fruits and tomato.plants have developed a natural form of habit of becoming large fruiting and these same temporary habits transfer to seeds. The mung beans were experimentally grafted to tomato plants and the size of the bean had increased. When these mung beans got crossed with one another the habit of larger mung been was retained. The same thing has been well documented with apple fruits for a long time. (bulb-rose site , pearmain-apple)

Another big influence other than human selection on plants are plants always having to be adapting to location, and location is the driving force of long life of trees and the trees need to be constantly aware of habits learned from the species that is indigenous to the locality and the parents. Unfortunately it happens sometimes when the rootstock of a cold hardy apple is grafted to a southern non cold hardy apple that when the seeds get collected from the hardy apple the seeds are mostly not hardy. On the other hand if the same apple were on it's own hardy roots more seed will be hardy. The variables if habit are changing, in this case the timing duration, as science defined as "photoperiodism" and other as yet less well defined terminology. Lack of fitting into a new environment for a tree is a tree in stress and always means short life expectancy even though all the paths are as yet not documented. 

So.

Your short life syndrome in grafts may be more a problem of stresses due to graft incompatibility than changing habits in the first place. Some species of trees like chestnuts must be grafted on another of which seeds are derived from the mother tree. Chestnuts can't be grafted long to other chestnut species.  

 

Thanx for an indepth explanation ! The reason i asked this question is I remember once a plant biologist did mention issues about inferiority issues. For instance if you want to plant and orange tree or Lemon tree which is highly resistant to drought and diseases (even though they are naturally that way already)  here people they take a Lime tree as a base plant during grafting. 

 

Anyways coming to my issue with the mango plants what I have decided to avoid risking time/years of waiting to find out what was right or wrong. I will rather plant both plants the Pure breed and the the grafted version of the pure breed on a different rootstock. Time will tell.. probably 7+ years from today 🙂 

 

Thanks for your input.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 26, 2019 - 12:25 am

Seek long term graft livability. So, Be very careful with the way you do things in Africa. There the practice of grafting trees may not be so common as here. The advice I would give is to use either tissue-cultured rootstocks or from seed. The idea is that both tissue culture and seeds provide "juvenility".

It is also an advantage to have very young scionwood as well. I think that is part of the idea from chestnut advice that is given for the american chestnut society in hard to graft american chestnuts species, and probably every other cases of fruit trees to some extent.

Best of luck!

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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 26, 2019 - 12:53 am

so insho

Rooney said
Seek long term graft livability. So, Be very careful with the way you do things in Africa. There the practice of grafting trees may not be so common as here. The advice I would give is to use either tissue-cultured rootstocks or from seed. The idea is that both tissue culture and seeds provide "juvenility".

It is also an advantage to have very young scionwood as well. I think that is part of the idea from chestnut advice that is given for the american chestnut society in hard to graft american chestnuts species, and probably every other cases of fruit trees to some extent.

Best of luck!  

so inshort when it comes to grafting in laymen's terms do u mean I should use a seed of the pure breed as base plant and then graft the pure breed (itself) to the base/seedling. ?

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 26, 2019 - 11:58 am

No. I am aiming my last content to longevity. The longest aged chestnut trees (eg. american chestnut society -or- your case) will be best when you avoid using mature wood (eg. adult -or- non-juvenile) from any tree graft. Can you imagine a what would happen grafting scions of the horizontal tips of fir trees and rooting them as a rootstock? (of course not) -They are already set to do a horizontal task, they stay that way, and they are fixated on something. Only long repeated steps of doing tissue cultures can restore juvenility at that point of life.

So I use this as an external explanation of "cone of juvenility". (click on image)

As far as it is possible choose from the cone of juvenility for both cuttings when using them as rootstock or scions above the graft. Which in all cases is the wood not ready to flower yet. -Just another useful tip into having long lasting trees as learned from trial and error in the North American sweet-chestnut restoration project. (unrelated to my other point concerning inheritance)

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 26, 2019 - 11:36 pm

SoloFarmer said
so insho

so inshort when it comes to grafting in laymen's terms do u mean I should use a seed of the pure breed as base plant and then graft the pure breed (itself) to the base/seedling. ?  

I mean yes you did catch the drift of it. I obviously had a long day with schedules and so on that I got lost a bit and missed your point. My apologies. I must leave the last post as is to remind myself to never be in a hurry on a very busy personal day while posting. 

I will still be here answering questions but just not every single day.

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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 28, 2019 - 12:19 pm

Rooney said
No. I am aiming my last content to longevity. The longest aged chestnut trees (eg. american chestnut society -or- your case) will be best when you avoid using mature wood (eg. adult -or- non-juvenile) from any tree graft. Can you imagine a what would happen grafting scions of the horizontal tips of fir trees and rooting them as a rootstock? (of course not) -They are already set to do a horizontal task, they stay that way, and they are fixated on something. Only long repeated steps of doing tissue cultures can restore juvenility at that point of life.

So I use this as an external explanation of "cone of juvenility". (click on image)

As far as it is possible choose from the cone of juvenility for both cuttings when using them as rootstock or scions above the graft. Which in all cases is the wood not ready to flower yet. -Just another useful tip into having long lasting trees as learned from trial and error in the North American sweet-chestnut restoration project. (unrelated to my other point concerning inheritance)  

 

 thats some serious knowledge you just dropped !! makes alot of sense iinfact i was having a similar concept in my mind telling myself and grafters.. why should i graft ? its like taking an old man and keeping him in a younger body the man is old already anyway !  So in other words from your explanation, to me grafting would just mean im getting a near 100% of the genetics from the mother plant. So keeping in mind the base plant is its own seedling which will be grafted with a juvenile portion of the mother tree !

The question comes is even though the juvenile portion of the plant is grafted to the seed plant of the mother tree now when it comes to fruiting how long would it take? short time as short as if a mature part of the tree was grafted to the seedling ? or take longer? and if longer is it safe to assume as long as in the event the seedling was never grafted ?

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 28, 2019 - 2:38 pm

SoloFarmer said

 thats some serious knowledge you just dropped !! makes alot of sense iinfact i was having a similar concept in my mind telling myself and grafters.. why should i graft ? its like taking an old man and keeping him in a younger body the man is old already anyway !  So in other words from your explanation, to me grafting would just mean im getting a near 100% of the genetics from the mother plant. So keeping in mind the base plant is its own seedling which will be grafted with a juvenile portion of the mother tree !

-Thanks !

SoloFarmer said

The question comes is even though the juvenile portion of the plant is grafted to the seed plant of the mother tree now when it comes to fruiting how long would it take? short time as short as if a mature part of the tree was grafted to the seedling ? or take longer? and if longer is it safe to assume as long as in the event the seedling was never grafted ? 

-[Q 1-3] -You would be right to assume it would take longer to fruit using an adult scion,
-[Q 4] -Same amount of time as if never grafted would make sense, but I am only guessing so.

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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 28, 2019 - 11:57 pm

Rooney said

-[Q 1-3] -You would be right to assume it would take longer to fruit using an adult scion,

did you mean to say it wouldn't take long ? because from my reasoning I would tend to imagine if I took a mature part of the mother tree and graft it to it's seedling it would take less time to fruit.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 29, 2019 - 10:17 am

It's still as true a statement had I said the word "would" or said "wouldn't" because it was tasting your method as a whole. My growing up years in Canada were being taught German by non english parents at the same time French in the school systems. Therefore I mostly failed at French, was okay in English, but was great in math and the sciences. But your understanding is great and you got it right, so I grade this understanding of yours with an "A+".

Another recent case study that I can remember occurred with cherry in Saskatchewan. One of the university students in a thesis had tried to figure out from the series of hybrid cherries if new seedling selections could be grafted on mature trees on the adult tops to speed up the new selections to flower and fruit faster.

The results did prove that the transition from juvenile to adult was influenced by the older the rootstock the tree was towards the faster rate of change on all the younger scions.

There are just so many ways to manipulate the final outcome with grafting.

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SoloFarmer
6 Posts
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August 29, 2019 - 12:29 pm

Rooney said
It's still as true a statement had I said the word "would" or said "wouldn't" because it was tasting your method as a whole. My growing up years in Canada were being taught German by non english parents at the same time French in the school systems. Therefore I mostly failed at French, was okay in English, but was great in math and the sciences. But your understanding is great and you got it right, so I grade this understanding of yours with an "A+".

Another recent case study that I can remember occurred with cherry in Saskatchewan. One of the university students in a thesis had tried to figure out from the series of hybrid cherries if new seedling selections could be grafted on mature trees on the adult tops to speed up the new selections to flower and fruit faster.

The results did prove that the transition from juvenile to adult was influenced by the older the rootstock the tree was towards the faster rate of change on all the younger scions.

There are just so many ways to manipulate the final outcome with grafting.  

Smile Ok I try to understand your english and follow up sometimes it gets very technical and English too is not my first language another issue is im not a plant specialist so some terms you write can confuse me. Im just a guy with ample land who just doesnt want to make a mistake when planting because the tree i plan to plant i want them to last generations and also need a logical explanation to the things I do not just because every body does grafting so should I !

Are you a plant scientist?

so please look at my diagram as this is how I have concluded/tending towards such conclusions in layman's  understanding. 

 

Untitled.jpg

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
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August 29, 2019 - 11:22 pm

Correct. The way you have illustrated in your image and the words is exactly what I had in mind for you to understand. 

I was reading on growing Mango from a seed. And it stated that mango come in two types and one of the type produce identical clones to the mother plant. And to us at the HOS consider this not something we ever see much of in our brands. So your original post you are really saying that X is the same clone, same genetic DNA between X for both case-1 and case-2.

See the section growing mango from seed.

I have no degree in horticulture either. I have property that I have invested in with a perfect balance of fruit harvests now in my current retirement years due to the help of other helpers and then the vast knowledge available on the internet. My degree is a tradesman electrician with specialized skills in design of control systems from my father. I bred chinchillas as a 12 year old (grey then white and charcoal colors), and continue to do so on fruit research in Alaska and western Washington climates with the help of others and we here usually see each other as volunteers on tree projects with similar interests.

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John S
PDX OR
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August 31, 2019 - 10:23 pm

I was going to try to go to get a Master's degree in botany, but then I decided I would just try to read Rooney's posts and try to understand them.  I find that if I read each one 5 times, I learn a lot and I understand about half of the material. I"m glad we have such an advanced scientist in our group.  I'm just a guy who grows a lot of food.  I love learning from you guys.

John S
PDX OR

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
772 Posts
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August 31, 2019 - 10:57 pm

Ahhh Thanks!! (blushing)

It's easy to be here. The scientists with degrees must find it hard to contribute. Hard enough as it is to keep up with current discoveries, but say something that eventually gets proven wrong and your professional degree (eg reputation) gets a bad rap.

It's also fun to see kinship in plants from around the planet now and then too.

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