Dadmeister

Very cool.

jeffreyp

did the seeds ever germinate?

winsorw

Very interesting progeny. Both are doing well in my area (zone 8), especially Saba that seems to entertain low light too.
Please keep us posted if you grow them.

Eric

Congratulations Pete !!
Totally awesome! Cant wait to see how good those seeds work!!

Winsorw: Awesome avatar, Luv it!

Sean: They dont. I'll explain when I get back, tonight.

curriedrice

Start filing your plant patent! If you did cross basjoo with the others then I can picture a forest of banana trees fruiting in many different areas.

Congrats and thanks for sharing!

Dadmeister

If you need volunteers to try and germinate your seeds...well.... Pick me, pick me, pick me.

Gabe15

Im sure it is possible to preserve the pollen in some manner, but of what I have read I have found only reference to storing the pollen up to 3 days in refrigeration. I don't think simply sticking them in your freezer will do the trick, but maybe some type of advanced deep-freeze method would work theoretically.

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

Gabe15

Looks good Pete. I don't want to discourage you (I do the same things you are doing), but just as a piece of information about banana breeding, the seeds, even if they look good on the outside, are often inviable or only viable with embryo rescue. By all means plant them and hope for the best, but if you are having a very difficult time getting them to grow, it is normal. Also there is no telling what the embryo inside is, it could have any range of ploidy, and anything beyond tetraploid is inviable. But....you could also become very lucky and produce something wonderful...who knows!

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

Lagniappe

Thanks for all your help, Gabe.
I wouldn't have been confident enough to play around with this, without your answering my batteries of questions.
I'm excited just to get seeds in an orinoco, and I'll keep trying to hybridize as long as the plants bloom at the right times.

sandy0225

very very cool!

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CValentine

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When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

sirmoebly

this is so cool....

Lagniappe

Oops, I need to re-phrase my original comment. I have seeds in my Orinoco fruit, which were pollinated with saba.

CValentine

Can you get any pulp without seeds to taste.....HMMMM??!!! Please Pete???!!!!
See - I would be the crazy lady straining the seeds out to taste these seeded varieties...

Pink bananas have a flavor...I will find out - I will separate those seeds out & make True Pink Banana Ice Cream...(since 'smoosh' will be all I get out of it.)

Thank you Pete for sharing with us, you are the adventurous one!! ~Cheryl

__________________
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

Gabe15

What Pete is saying is that his fruit is just an 'Orinoco' fruit, it is nothing special taste or texture wise. He pollinated it so that it would form seeds, but its still just a normal 'Orinoco'.

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

Lagniappe

Well, I got a grand total of 13 seeds from 27 fruits. Seems most were in the one fruit I picked...go figure.
There were many others, but they were white and not well formed yet.
The saba fruits were a flop.

frog7994

ok now see if you can get the seeds to germinate. That would be really cool!

RobG7aChattTN

You might want to try and contact someone who specializes in embryo rescue. That way germination would be almost 100% vs. the usual...or perhaps even less likely with a hybrid. I sure hope your basjoo crosses produce seed! Any chance that the flowers could have been self pollinated after you tried the cross? If the cross didn't take the flower could still be pollinated. I've heard that basjoo won't cross with anything due to a different number of chromosomes...but I don't know if that is true.

Lagniappe

I'm not overly concerned with it, just having some fun...for free, with a slim chance of a wonderful outcome.
I removed the anthers from the female flowers before the pollen became activated, per the instructions I was given, so self pollination can be ruled out.
Gabe wrote something in another thread that leads me to believe that Basjoo make a better doner than mother plant.

Gabe15

The reason I recommended M. basjoo as the male in that situation was because they wanted to use 'Orinoco' as well which happens to set seeds well, and M. basjoo will definitely have fertile pollen (even though it may not be compatible with the 'Orinoco', only tests will tell), but it may be hard to get pollen from the 'Orinoco' to use on the M. basjoo.

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