Cross pollination is minimal. The new mango variety comes from a mono-embryonic seed that does not grow true to type. Which is their habit.

David Sturrock's mango breeding reports on FSHS have some interesting info into selection. Of particular interest is the report describing the 'Young' mango which was bred by Sturrock (not Dr Campbell) and fell into oblivion for 40 years until Pine Island started marketing it as the Tebow mango :-).

Jeff

Interesting.....Zands your comment:

"Cross pollination is minimal. The new mango variety comes from a mono-embryonic seed that does not grow true to type. Which is their habit"

I think you agree with me then. I've heard cross pollination is minimal in mangos so that part of my question I concede as being a stretch in the first place, unless one is hand pollinating. But....a cross-parented mango fruit when planted and grown from seed, would be a unique variety and not true to either parent - or better yet - would have some characteristics of both, correct...?

Harry - yes I can see where it would be hard to judge a hybrid mango from a true-to-parent type simply based on looks...I guess a difference in taste and fiber content would be additional factors....

Jeff - great article. Boy these pioneer guys were working on hybridization so long ago....

(thanks folks - this helps to pass the agonizing dormant months here in the desert!)

mangodog

I think cross pollination is minimal because its exponentially more likely a tree will pollinate itself with its own flowers.

polyembryonic seedlings have one shoot is zygotic or produced sexually either from self pollination or cross pollination and one is somatic or a clone.

monoembryonic seedlings are only zygotic

just like self pollinated monoembryonic seedlings, there is variability in crosses as well, so one carrie x mallika cross pollinated seedling can be completely different form another. cross pollinating two mangos is just as much of a crapshoot as planting out a monoembryonic seedling.

mangoHound
I don't know if I agreed with you or not but how about this. If someone really wants mango cross pollination then have some beehives on the property. I kept bees in the past but am afraid to have them in Fl due to African bees, lawsuits, etc. // I'm not an Obama fan but I give him (Michelle too) credit for having beehives on the White House grounds. A long time White House carpenter set them up.

thanks folks - this helps to pass the agonizing dormant months here in the desert

This is the mango hot stove league. We're discussing draft picks, trades and budding prospects

Mango cross pollination is a topic I find very interesting. I plan on experimenting with manual cross pollination this year. Maybe Harry will be willing to let me use some of his trees for the experiments.

Manual cross pollination was done to a large extent in Australia by Dr. Ian Bally. They manually pollinated individual flowers with pollen from other mangos and related mangifera species in order to develop new mangos for Australia. They were all pretty much crosses with Kensington Pride.

If you would like to manually cross pollinate a mango the process isnt too difficult. Here is a basic rundown of the process. It is much easier to explain visually but this is the best I can do at the moment.
1)During the afternoon of the day before you plan to cross pollinate remove all of the open flowers from the panicle and then bag it to prevent pollination.
2)The next morning, remove bag and identify all the hermaphrodite flowers and remove all other flowers. Take off all the anthers.
3) Pollinate with male flowers.

If I remember correctly there is above a 99% correct cross using that process. The less precise method was to take a small potted plant of the variety you want the male pollen from and put it under a netted tent with the "female" tree and then throw a carcass of some sort under the tent and let the flies do the work for you. That process is not as effective as manually pollinating. I will try to find some more information on the actual work that was done in Australia. It was very interesting stuff.

Mangodog,

on the issue of whether a cross pollinated flower will produce 'new' fruit on the tree, the answer as far as I know is "no". It is the seed from which the 'new variety' will grow.

On the part about Glenn, Glenn was a Haden seedling, but I'm not sure that it was a result of a cross. Pedigree analysis has been conflicting I believe.

May I add my two sense please? LOL I'm a self professed mango nut and I admit that it's a passion of mine. Just wanted to share some interesting things that I've read on mango crossing/hybridization experiments in other parts of the world. Sometimes, experiments may not be perceived to be up to par with some of our US standards BUT I try to at least keep an open mind. :D

I read that in India that farmers used to try and hand pollinate the flowers themselves. They have since turned away from this painful method. Turns out it's a very daunting task considering that mangoes drop way more than 80% of flowers. They would labor for an entire season hand pollinating trees just for a handful of fruit "hopefuls." Success rate is painfully small, and even then, there's no guarantee that you introduced the pollen grain that actually fertilized the ovary. That is, unless you isolate all foreign/undesirable pollen that can potentially contaminate the experiment.
They work with nature instead. One interesting method that Farmers in Brazil use are flies and nets. They "cage" mother & father mango trees in bloom with flies as pollinators. They tag all the resulting fruit of the supposed cross. They sprout the seeds and use an ingenious method of forcing flowering hormones from a mature tree to the sapling. The sapling produces fruit after one year and they evaluate the fruit. This "shortcut" of using flowering hormones from a mature tree to induce fruiting on a sapling reduces the time it takes to evaluate a new potential cross. If it's good enough, they detach the sapling from the adult tree and allow it to mature further. It has just passed the preliminaries. Genetic testing is done later along the line to confirm its heritage. The fly is known to pollinate mangoes, as farmers in Taiwan discovered during the early years, when the only mango trees in an entire field to fruit were the ones growing around a rotted pig carcass.

Interestingly enough, you can taste and smell certain distinct characteristics of a mango tree by how their young leaves smell and taste. I read about it, then tried it myself one day. Pick and crush a young mango leaf in your hands and see if it works for you. I do this myself, when evaluating a sapling mango tree. I don't suggest chewing your young mango leaves if you are allergic to mango sap but I will say that young mango leaves are used as food in some countries, such as certain parts of the Philippines and I've never had sap burns on my mouth while sampling the leaves. I can smell in the leaves most of the heady odors the fruit has when green, how much turpentine and herbal notes it may have, etc. This isn't a scientific evaluation and I never claimed it to be, but it gives you a ballpark idea of what to expect. There's my two sense on hybridizing mangoes... Thanks for your time.

Unconventional and bizarre? You betcha!! Nuts? Kinda... LOL

everettsky

wow everettsky I never tried that with Mangos but its definitely true for citrus.

ah....squam.....yes, that makes sense - the new variety is in the seed of the cross pollinated fruit....i was thinking that fruit itself would develop its uniqueness....

Everett - your process is kind of like wine tasting...fascinating....

mangoD

Yes - I was told that Gary Zill can tell the parentage of a seedling by smelling the crushed leaves. He'll reportedly go through a batch of young seedlings eliminating the ones whose smell indicates an undesirable parent. I wonder if you could train Fido to do it for you .. maybe bark when he finds a seedling of good parentage :-).

Jeff

Everettsky,
You mentioned a mango seedling producing a fruit within one year. Do you have any more information on the methods used?

Hey Sheehan, I just noticed that the book that you lent me has some interesting info on this topic. This is probably getting a bit esoteric (:-), but here goes:
Singh (1969) has suggested that young mango seedlings can be induced to flower and fruit if they are grafted onto comparable shoots of a bearing tree (a few days before flowering). The scions are defoliated and girdled. Using this technique, it has been reported that the fruit characteristics of F1 hybrids can be determined within 2 years and F2 hybrids within 4 years...

Sounds like an interesting technique. Two years isn't bad.

Jeff

Jeff,
That is one of the methods I have read about. Also the use of certain chemicals seem to do the job. I wonder if the chemicals are more effective than the grafting. Well I hope I can manage to make some F1 hybrids this year from Harry's trees. Any possible crosses you would like to see? I was thinking a Julie and PPK. Julie being the maternal. The possible problem I see with using Julie as a maternal is the anthracnose problem that might destroy the entire crop of crosses.

Ohh boy, that's going to be awesome! You'll have to get Harry to lend you some space to plant those out. What's really interesting is that out of the few dozen seedlings that came out of David Sturrock's uncontrolled crosses, we got 2 excellent mangoes (the Duncan and the Tebow). I say you might have a chance of developing a 'murahilin' mango :-). A funny combination would be julie x keitt :-).

Jeff

Murahilin,

The excerpt which jeffhagen included sounds like the method I was referring to. From what I remember, the use of chemicals to induce flowering on saplings wasn't very reliable. Something about some varieties being less receptive than others?

Basically, they choose a mother plant which is dwarf or short for ease of accessibility and is known for blooming reliably and profusely. They take the F1 seedlings, approach graft them to branch tips of the mother plant before it blooms. The seedling is defoliated above the graft area in order for the hormones of the mother tree to express themselves in the seedling. The mother tree branch is girdled right below the graft area in order to prevent the re-absorption of blooming hormones back down and past the seedling/mother graft. The blooming hormones are instead transferred/shared by the F1 and forces it to bloom prematurely. Any developing fruit on the F1 are supported by sticks because of the underdeveloped state of the F1 seedling. This fruit is evaluated upon ripening to see if it's worthy of propagating.

I think the reason they list 2 years is to give the F1 enough time to harden and have at least 2 or more growth flushes. I know that one objective is to have leaves remain on the F1 below the graft, so when it is detached after the fruiting season, it can fall back on it's own leaves for photosynthesis. Otherwise, I don't see why it can't be done sooner than 2 yrs if the seedling is vigorous enough and the blooming cycle permits?

On another note, I would love to see a Lancetilla x Mallika cross. I would love to have the manageable size of both parents, production of Mallika, large meaty fruit with beautiful yellowish/red color. I imagine the Mallika lending it's flavors to the Lancetilla but the Lancetilla complimenting by juicyness. On another post, a Mallika was crossed with a Van Dyke and the result was a beautiful yellow/peach/pink color with absolutely no watered down flavors reported. Oh, the possibilities! This is one of my "dream" crosses....LOL

everettsky

Jeffhagen - Just wanted to say thank you for posting that mango hybridization article. A great read about the history of Duncan and Tebow. I did not know that it was Pine Island that renamed Young to Tebow. I'd love to see a Julie x Keitt too.

I went around crushing the leaves of all my trees and you are right, you can definitely detect faint notes in the oil of the leaves.

I imagine a Julie x Keitt would probably be reminiscent of a Graham, though Ive never been a huge fan of Keitt.

Julie and PPK are both my favorite mangos but they are so different I wonder if it would come out similar to edward.

I would like to see a Carrie x Ice Cream cross. Carrie for its initial mango flavor and Ice Cream for its resinous aftertaste

Julie and Mallika flavors would compliment each other nicely or Carrie x Mallika

Yes, oddly enough the history and the name for the Young mango was lost. It simply became known as 'Edward x Kent #14'. It had been sold by other nurseries under the 'Edward x Kent #14' label, and I think there is even one planted out at the Fruit and Spice Park. When Pine Island started propagating it, neither they nor Dr Crane realized that it actually had already been named :-). I pointed this out to both PI and Dr Crane a few months ago. I'm still waiting for PI to update their description of the mango to honor Mr Sturrock as the breeder of that mango. Perhaps Mr Sturrock should have patented it like he did with the Duncan :-).

Jeff

Cross breeding sounds interesting. :)

I'm going to stop calling my Tebow, Tebow and start calling it Young.

everretSky

That was so interesting with the rotting pig carcass and all. Honey bees would do a better pollination job than flies but you use what you have at hand. A beehive just has to help your mango trees... But I see accounts on the internet that say this is not so

That is my 2â worth.

I had read the story of the Taiwanese dramatically increasing their yields of Irwin Mangos by attracting flies to their orchards. The one I read said that one farmer had much better yields on a part of his property that was near to a rubbish dump. He had the idea that the flies might be something to do with it, so he found fish carcases from the local fishing industry and scattered them around his orchard. I think they may have extended that into some sort of spray.
I think a lot of breeding programs around the world rely on random outcrossing from cross pollination of closely planted trees. In Australia, the R2E2 variety was a result of this, but it was later decided after failure to repeat this success despite a large number of seedlings being evaluated, that this had been a very lucky result. Hand pollination was adopted because, although a very labour intensive method initially, it avoids a lot of wasted resources evaluating seedlings that aren't the intended hybrid.
Now that there is more research into molecular markers it is possible to tell which seedlings are hybrids much sooner, so the random outcrossing method may be better with this technology.
David

Anyone willing to try this out in their back yard, just out of curiosity? Fish carcass, anyone? LOL! I would try it myself-- in the name of science.... but I don't want to get evicted from my apartment. LOL!

Maybe a poor producer such as an Edwards tree might benefit from this type of experiment. Can we say bumper crop!

On another note, has anyone read up on mango compatibility? I remember reading an article from India that stated some mango trees were more receptive to the pollen of certain other varieties. They conducted a series of experiments and concluded that some varieties of mango benefited from being paired with a particular variety over others.
--This reminded me of apples and cherries, where certain varieties are good cross pollinators of others and some are not ideal at all.

Any other thoughts on this? Has anyone read/researched further on ideal mango pollinators partnerships? I'm so curious to hear. :D

everettsky

I stand corrected (by Sheehan), the 'Young' (aka Tebow) mango WAS patented :-). It seems he found the original patent application from 1972 :-).

Jeff

So did they buy the Young name or is Tebow a distinct Haden X Edward cross?

I hope it wasnt originally named after Cy Young and renamed after Tebow, that would be a tragedy.

I spoke with Dr Crane a few months back and he said that when Pine Island began to propagate the 'Young', no one realized that David Sturrock was the breeder and that it was already named (and patented!). It seems no one checked the FSHS archives. I confirmed with both parties (Dr Crane and Pine Island) that the Tebow is in fact the Edward x Kent #14. So yes, the Tebow is one and the same with the 'Young' mango. The 'Young' was named after Dr. T.W. Young.

Jeff

The "Young" mango was patented by my grandfather. It was issued the Plant Patent Number 3,181 on May 16, 1972. It was named after Dr. T. W. Young of Vero Beach, Florida.