Hmm well I just did some reading on breeding (ha), I wonder if both breeders need to be true to seed, which is where they reproduce identical seeds. I know that the Meyer isn't a true type!

Here is a website with great info on breeding and diy.
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/html_pubs/PLBREED/pl_breed.html

Best of luck!

jellibean, very few hobby growers attempt to develop their own hybrids, for several reasons. First off, most hybrids are only average at best. Norwood, no, the attempt to develop cultivars is usually done with a strongly monoembryonic citrus crossed with a polyembryonic cultivar, It will take many, many attempts, to create multiple hybrids, then you're going to need to wait between 5 and 20 years before your hybrids fruit. Jellibean, most of us enjoy growing "tried and true" cultivars, even rarer ones, because, in the past, there have been plenty to choose from. With the introduction of the Asian Citrus Psyllid carrying Huanglongbing (HLB, or Citrus Greening Disease), the wide variety of cultivars we have enjoyed in past years have significantly dwindled. Not to discourage you, but it's an arduous task, and you need to have a lot of land, time, and patience.

To specifically answer your question about kumquat crosses - there are a few out there. All I have come across are not good eating. I have a beautiful Indio Mandarinquat that produces lots of very pretty and inedible fruit. I suppose I could make marmalade of out it. There are several other kumquat crosses, all are pretty terrible.

Patty S.

My guess is "no."

I was reading a great plant-breeding book a while back - Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener - and from the way he describes it, many times when plants are crossed, if the offspring of the first cross are desirable they'll be propagated asexually, and nobody bothers to keep crossing them and growing them out - meaning a lot of genetic diversity never shows up.

I know with trees this will take a few years, for the tree to grow, produce fruit (maybe) and (maybe) produce viable seeds, which must then be grown out and crossed again. This is going to be more of an on-going, long-range experiment/hobby for me, not a quick-results thing. I'm just wondering what's been done, and what's worth doing (or not) so I have some ideas about where to start (or not).

Here is a link that might be useful: Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener

Sorry Patty, I didn't see your post when I was writing mine.

I'm not in it for large-scale production, just for my own amusement.

My meyer lemon had five seeds, which looked viable to my eyes (I could see leafy green through the seed casing), but I didn't plant them because it lived at the greenhouse when it was blossoming and I don't know what it may have crossed with. I want to do some controlled crossing, just for the heck of it. (Kind of like how rose breeders do, even if the results aren't catalog-worthy, just to say "I made that one.")

Is there some information out there as to which trees are mono- and poly-embryonic?

Thanks again.

Rachel

Logee's sells a 'Sunquat' that is a cross between a Meiwa kumquat and some kind of lemon. I read a book by somebody at Logee's and they said that the Sunquat peel was edible and the fruit was sweet enough to eat plain. It was probably still quite tart.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunquat at Logee's

Logee's! I was trying to think of them last night. Thank you!

Got trees from logees very small but good price and healthy

Rachel, the best online source for knowing what citrus cultivars are polyembroyonic (this producing both hybrid and clone seedlings) and those that are strongly monoembryonic (only hybrid seedlings) is the Citrus Pages site:

http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/home.html

I would also encourage you to join the Citrus Growers Forum as well, there are a handful of folks interested in hybridizing citrus, but again, warning, it is a long, arduous and rather tedious process:

http://citrus.forumup.org/?mforum=citrus

And, the Meyer lemon is mostly monoembryonic, so the seedling you have will be a cross between a Meyer lemon (the mother tree), and whatever other citrus pollen a bee brought to that flower.

Patty S.

Wow! Lots of info there. Thank you, Patty!