Grafting Papayas
I was reading over some old threads about growing papayas and grafting sweet hawaiian types onto mountain types and different combinations and such. Then I read Davids comments on how much more adapted the mexican types seemed to be to our valley climate and was wondering if anyone has tried grafting a hawaiian type onto a mexican type? I too have heard from many different sources of how the mexican type papayas can handle more cold and adverse weather conditions than say a solo type so it seems to make sense that it might make a better rootstock. Any thoughts on this Ben?
William Visalia Ca
The following thread was started by William on December 26, 2004 at 7:01 am PST
William, I am still at the stage of trying to get ANY papaya to fruit successfully for me, wihtout yet worrying about the best for my climate. As I have only heard of a very small number of fruiting papayas here at all, I know there are no best papayas for temperate NZ!
My grafting attempts have been focused on a rootstock that is both cold tolerant in my winter soil condiitons, has as much vigour as possible, and has the sweetest fruit flavour possible. I've spoken to some of the ENZA apple breeders who are focused in this area, and with apples, the same scion on differnt r/s can produce radically differnt fruit, even as much as yellow apples which should be red. It seems no one really knows what grafting does.
The guy in Tauranga who had a tropical papaya grafted onto mountain type fruiting for years at his place had previously grafted a hops plant onto Cannabis sativa roots, he swore that the plant looked like hops and acted like marijuana. This seems totally wrong, but if true, then suggests genetic transfer through the r/s. I'd love to search through this topic in depth and find out what really happens to our scions on differnt r/s, but I guess thats a lifetimes work in itself.
It is interesting to see the huge variety in characteristics in Hass avos on different roots, they look like totally differnt cv.s somtimes. I htink perhpas with papaya we should just try every combination we can and see what happens, knowing that it may never be reapeatable wihtout exceptionally good note taking!
The above followup was added by Ben on December 26, 2004 at 11:36 am PST.
I've heard that hops rumour before, some people swear you get narcotic hops. I've also read you can graft various things on Datura and get deadly fruits, so there must be some transfer going on. I don't know that I've seen a Hass avocado looking different before, only bigger and smaller but then again I guess 90% of the trees here are on Zutano roots.
Ben have you tried grafting the other way around a mountain papaya onto tropical rootstock, who's to say the top wont impart some hardiness to the roots and the roots might make the grafts fruit sweeter?
The above followup was added by Jason on December 26, 2004 at 5:32 pm PST.
Jason, at the tropical fruit world place in Murwillumbah they graft babacos onto tropical papaya roots to keep them alive in the hot humid summers. The guy found it very amusing that I did the opposite to keep the papaya alive.
I've never considered doing that. Might be one for the experimental list once I finally build some more GH space to keep the tropical roots alive over winter. If we could get more sweetness into babaco it might make a very nice fruit. I think I will definetly give this a go.
The above followup was added by Ben on December 26, 2004 at 6:50 pm PST.