Basjoofriend

I agree Gabe15, you will only have success when you use basjoo pollen to pollinate Ice Cream! The reason is simple, Ice Cream is triploid, ABB und Musa basjoo diploid. The new tetraploid disease resistant banana cultivars were created from pollinating triploid plants with diploid pollens! Triploid pollens might be infertile. So will my Brazilian basjoo be the dad of my new hardy fruit bananas! I plan to try pollinate Mysore, Prata and FHIA-18 with basjoo pollens in the next years in Brazil. You also try to cross Mysore with basjoo, this cross was already successfully with viable hybrids! You can renew the cross. But you need 10 to 20 Mysore plants. because only one seed was found in each bunch. 10 seeds were found in 10 bunches and 5 of them did germinate and all of the seedlings were viable.

Best wishes
Basjoofriend

jeffreyp

Gabe15

This is not entirely true, some triploids can produce viable pollen (just as they can produce viable ovules and set seed when pollinated and fertilized). You must remember that although triploidy contributes to sterility some of the time, it is not a major factor and certainly not a dominating element. Most of the reasons for sterility are unknown errors that occur during meiosis (but not inherently related to ploidy level), or issues in the pollen germination. There are many reasons for sterility, but they are not well understood.

The reason I recommend using 'Ice Cream' as the female, is that even though there is a diverse origin of the ABB group, the ABBs seem to be rather good at setting seed. M. basjoo is likely not the best parent to breed for cold hardiness with, it does not breed well even with wild diploid M. acuminata and M. balbisiana, but if trying with a small number of plants, its easier to get a large amount of M. basjoo pollen and pollinate a plant that is known for setting seeds in some cases, rather than digging for a small amount of pollen and pollinating a plant which is poor at setting seeds with pollen from a different variety.

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

Basjoofriend

Thanks, this shows how to pollinate bananas. I will take so as many as male flowers from Musa basjoo "Sakhalin" from Baldur Garten which is now in Brazil in my new yard and touch the female flowers of Mysore, Prata, FHIA-18 und Musa sikkimensis with the from Musa basjoo outbroken male flowers. Then I will wrap the pollinated inflorescence by one plastic bag and pollinate every day until the first male hand begin to flower, then I castrate the bunch (cut the male flowers and the male bud off) and I let the plastic bag at the now pollinated bunch for some weeks. So that I avoid unwanted free pollination from other pollen. The bunch must be always labeled with the names of cross partners, e. g. Mysore x basjoo, FHIA-18 x basjoo, sikkimensis x basjoo, Prata x basjoo etc.

If it is not very successful, then I will try to cross with pollen of sikkimensis, yunnanensis und xishuangbannaensis. Also Mysore x sikkimenis might be very good and cold resistant, probably even better fruit quality. And also FHIA-18 x sikkimensis might be good. If Musa sikkimensis does fail in my garden in Lucianópolis because of the sandy soil and heat, then I will improve the soil, I will dig up one large hole, so 10.00 meters long x 1.50 meters wide x 0.60 meters deep and fill the hole up with garden waste, leaves, lawn cut, horse manure, chicken manure and dead old sugar cane. Then I plant at the end of this year or at the begin of the next year many pups of Mysore and other cross partners. But I self will not dig up because I was operated on Tuesday at my leg, the titan plate and 6 screws were removed from the bone of the tibia in my right leg, spent 3 days in the hospital and may not carry heavy things for 3 months, but my bone is o.k., so that I may last my leg fully, but not with heavy lasts and heavy works, no sport for 6 weeks, the holes of the screws in the bone have to close in the healing process. Then my housekeeper Antonio will dig up and I will instruct him.

But also Helton has seedlings of Musa sikkimensis and he also grow this species, I gave him the seed last year. See also Família das musaceae on the site of my friend, he also supports me. He will produce seeds, pups and also pollen.

Best wishes
Joachim