c2h6

I am looking for some Musa velutina, or whatever the species name is now (Musa dasycarpa var. velutina?), for an experiment to double the ploidy level. I have some experience with this in other species (Passiflora and Citrus) and think this might work to eventually make a seedless Musa velutina. I am open for other suggestions, but this is my thinking behind it: M. velutina is a dwarf species, with attractive fruits that are edible but seedy, is cold hardy, and fairly quick to flower from seed. Please contact me if you would like to donate some seeds, preferably from a cold hardy selection (i.e. Plant Delights Nursery), and if you do, I will send you a tetraploid plant when I am successful (confirmed by flow cytometry). Possibly multiple plants. I will take as many seeds as you can send, the more the merrier. (100 or more; the doubling process is usually fatal to most.)

Here's a link to a blog post about my experience doubling ploidy with Passiflora: https://gardenscientist.wordpress.co...ue&iframe=true

RobG7aChattTN

If you don't get enough this year please remind us next fall while we might be more likely to have seeds. I think this is a brilliant idea. I actually lost my velutina due to other aggressive plants chocking it out but my Musa ornate had come back even after some cold winters and also produces in a short season. What citrus did you try? What results did you get?

c2h6

I recently treated some germinating seeds of Pandan Wangi pummelo x red Cooper grapefruit, and about 3 or 4 out of the 25 I tested were 4x. Citrus is a little more complicated due to the long generation times (5 years until fruiting).

RobG7aChattTN

I was just wondering about the citrus because the cold hardy varieties tend to be small and seedy. With all the negatives with viente cohol a seedless velutina would be so much better. Good luck!

Gabe15

I have lots of M. velutina seed I grew a few years ago, and I would be happy to send you some.

If your goal is to create a triploid M. velutina (2n x 4n cross), it's possible but the resulting plants will not make edible fruit as you also need parthenocarpy genes in the mix, and those come from edible cultivars.

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siege2050

Is it possible to cross Velutina with an edible and have seedless? I tried to cross Orinoco x Velutina but it didn't produce seed. I was hoping for the cold tolerance of both, and the rapid growth and blooming of Velutina. Maybe even improved cold tolerance as I have noticed a lot of hybrids are cold hardiness superior to their parents.

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Gabe15

It's possible, but you just need to keep trying, breeding is a numbers game. These types of hybrid seeds are very difficult to germinate however, and normally require in-vitro embryo germination. No guarantee on the viability/vigor of the resulting plants.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

c2h6

You are correct, I was thinking triploid was key, but parthenocarpy is a separate issue. I would think that once you have a tetraploid you could cross it to a diploid (like veinte cohol or pisang lilin) that produces seedless, parthenocarpic fruit. Or maybe with a tetraploid like FHIA-02. Converting to tetraploid may not be necessary, but might help. In Citrus, we use tetraploids as the mothers when making 3x hybrids, because you don't have to do embryo rescue, where you do with 2x x 4x crosses.

Richard Wallace of Armstrong Atlantic University described a new hybrid he made, which he called Musa x georgiana, which is M. balbisiana x M. velutina. (Article link and description here: Musa georgiana, a new intersectional hybrid banana with edible banana breeding relevance and ornamental potential). This proves the cross possible.

Pip313

Define inedible fruit. No fruit? Or something else

siege2050

Seeded fruit. You can eat some of them but not worth it, Velutina is like a banana full of buckshot or BB's.

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Pip313

No I was referring to the triploid comment. What does a triploid do? Usually it's seedless fruit from early embryo abortion. (At least with most other kinds of plants)

c2h6

Turns out bananas are more complicated, in that the genes for seedlessness (parthenocarpic) is separate from triploidy. Triploidy increases sterility, but triploid bananas can still set seed, just very low numbers of seed. Tetraploid and diploid bananas can also be seedless, ie pisang lilin is a parthenocarpic diploid and some of the FHIA hybrids are seedless tetraploids. Because people selected varieties which they didn't know we're triploid, triploids seem to have a good mix of increased size from the gigas effect (from the increased ploidy) as well as enhanced seedlessness from being highly sterile.

PR-Giants

Gabe, would an AA Kokopo be good for crossing?

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Pip313

So it's still worth it to do triploid for the less seed and bigger fruit aspects. As long as you understand they will still have some seeds?

Gabe15

Triploidy can contribute to less seed, sometimes, but it's really more complicated than that. If you look at all banana cultivars, you will find there are no hard and fast rules and it really varies a lot. There are many reasons why a particular cultivar may be sterile besides ploidy, and there are often differences between the female and male fertility of a given cultivar. There are highly sterile diploids, and highly fertile triploids. In some classic breeding schemes such as with the older FHIA cultivars, they used highly fertile improved diploid lines and then crossed them onto triploid landraces and selecting improved tetraploids. This allowed a lot of fertility to remain, which is kinda necessary to get to that point, but some newer strategies are focusing on then crossing improved tetraploids back with improved diploids to get improved triploids in hopes of regaining some sterility. This is complicated by the fact that no matter what ploidy levels you start with in either parent, when crossing anything with parthenocarpy, you can get a range of ploidy levels in the progeny landing anywhere along the line of 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, and 7x. 5x, 6x and 7x normally result in highly stunted, weak, inviable plants, so they are easy to screen out, but then the resulting stuff must be confirmed for ploidy.

Sometimes the easiest approach is just to de-bud everything with fertile pollen.

Seedlessness in bananas is a condition, not a trait. Sterility and parthenocarpy are traits which can lead to seedless fruits under the right conditions, but not always. In my experience the most straightforward reason why you don't normally have seeds in edible bananas is not because they are not capable of having seeds, but because there is no effective pollination system happening, either there is no viable pollen around, or the pollen isn't being moved around. In large collections of diverse bananas, especially those containing wild species which have highly fertile and abundant pollen, you start to see a lot of seeds in all kinds of different cultivars. Often edible cultivars are grown in large monocultures away from wild populations, where the cultivar might be either male or female sterile, so you won't see seeds. Even if you have a large collection of edible cultivars, seeds are still rare because some will be female sterile, there might not be much pollen on the clones with fertile pollen, or there is no effective pollen vector. If you start hand pollinating you can start to see seed if you have compatible parents.

That being said, the amounts and viabilities vary widely between cultivars, but even in breeding programs there is variability within cultivars and crossing arrangements. The same cross repeated multiple times, at the same time of day, same time of year, and some person doing to pollination can yield wildly different amounts of seed. You may get 0 seeds/bunch, 0 seeds/bunch, 5 seeds/bunch, 500 seeds/bunch, 0 seeds/bunch etc...

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Gabe15

Yes. It has been used in breeding programs before. The only notes I can find on it at the moment indicate it has fertile pollen, and is unlikely to set seed. So you can use the pollen to pollinate another variety.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Sam g

It has been a few years since this post was submitted. Have you made much progress with the breeding? A seedless velutina would be fantastic! Looking forward to hearing some updates.

Also has anyone seen or grown velutina with significantly less seed than the average one?

Regards

Sam

c2h6

Hi Sam,
I was able to get some seeds supplied by Gabe, and I attempted embryo rescue on them and wasn't able to get a single seed to germinate in-vitro. I found a plant with what appeared to be nearly ripe bananas and got fresh seeds which I sowed in soil, and none of them germinated. I did get some hybrid seed to germinate in-vitro from a cross Gabe made between M. velutina x M. acuminata f. malaccensis and sent him the three plants. He'll have to update on those. I no longer have access to a lab with tissue culture facilities, so I've had to suspend any progress on further attempts.

Tytaylor77

It seems I get 80-90% rates on spring/summer seeds! On fall seeds I get 0-10%. Both totally mature fruits!

Anyone else notice this?
I’ve done embryo rescue on a few just for fun! I had one actually grow until mold took over! It’s amazing how fast you see growth vs shoot-tip culture.

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beam2050

that explains why I am having so much trouble with seeds. I am buying early spring, so I am getting winter seeds. thanks, now some renewed vigour trying to get a Burmese blue.

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