North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Trying to cross plums with apricots isn't easy.  Zaiger found the secret is to grow all the parent trees in greenhouses.  If you cross apricot and plum outdoors you'll  get perhaps one viable seed in fifty pollnations.  When the temperatures can be held in a narrow range, as in a greenhouse, the rate goes up considerably, to perhaps one in ten (estimated).  Then you have to grow the seedlings out and  hope at least one will be decent AND will set a reasonable amount of fruit.  I once grew Luther Burbank's "Purple" plumcot and the biggest crop I ever had was 13 fruits.  Most of the flowers never set  because the flower  parts were distorted due to genetic abnormalities from crossing two such distantly related parents.  
In growing out seedlings of plumcots I almost never got any that had more than a slight hint of apricot in them.  And the best bearing ones all came out indistinguishable from plums.  
Crossing carefully chosen plums seems more practical in most conditions.  There are a LOT of good plums that will give offspring as good or better than most pluots or apriums.
-Lon Rombough
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On May 25, 2009, at 3:29 PM, Melissa Kacalanos wrote:

All the pluots I see marketed were bred for California's climate, but I bet it would be possible to breed them for other climates. Has anyone crossed apricots with hardier plums, like the Asian/American hybrid plums?

California has such great weather for fruit, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy that fruit breeders will create varieties optimized for that climate, and ignore other climates that are in greater need of new fruit varieties.

Melissa

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