Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenFin
By looking at them when they're young, like all the rest of us, instead of waiting until they're adults. Maybe this is a language thing, because virtually everyone except you is using the word 'sucker' to apply to young plants, whereas you are choosing to continue to refer to adults as suckers.
Adults that started off as water suckers should be very similar to adults that started off as sword suckers, since they've had a long lifespan (a year?) to catch up on root development. So if you're looking to differentiate, it just doesn't seem like it would make any sense at all to wait until they're adults before trying to determine which is which.
If you're wondering, "Well, if as adults water suckers eventually catch up to sword suckers in terms of root development, at least in nearly ideal conditions like are found in Puerto Rico, then why would the bunches tend to weigh slightly less?" the answer is almost certainly that nutritional deficiencies along the way during development have lingering effects at flowering/fruiting time. (Richard, iirc, has posted a study showing that potassium deficiencies in early development have a lingering negative impact on fruit production as an adult during that first fruiting cycle. So since water suckers have vastly inferior root systems during the early and adolescent stages, it seems to make perfect sense that adults that started off as water suckers would tend to have smaller first bunches.)
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I don't think it would make much of a difference if you prefer to call them "Adults FKA Water Suckers" and "Adults FKA Sword Suckers".
Puerto Rico is far from ideal, we have 100% Black Sigatoka and banana weevils. The plants grown on the mainland are much more beautiful. I can not explain why my averages show that "Adults FKA Water Suckers" produce bunches 1.5 ounces heavier than "Adults FKA Sword Suckers", but it could be nutritional deficiencies. I do not use chemical fertilizers and my soil has near zero organic matter, but 1.5 ounces either way is really not that important.
My main concern is at the time of flowering they have sufficient roots and leaves to produce a quality bunch.
I am not concerned if one flowers two hours before of the other, or which has more roots before they are ready to be planted in the field. Now those things might be important to you, but it is not important to me who has the first baby leaf or baby root.
I do not know if you have planted thousands of water suckers or you are just repeating something you read, but it is interesting that you think it takes a year for them to catch up.
The end of race is more important than the start.