Can Cross Pollination Effect the Flavour of Citrus

Correy says...
Hi Don,

This is a very interesting question and one that I had to ask a few people to understand.

Let me summarise your question.

Can the pollen of one type of citrus eg a grapefruit pollinate another type of citrus eg an orange and effect the flavour of the fruit.

The answer is No, Unless you eat the seed.

Let me explain.

When the bee takes the pollen of a grapefruit and pollinates an orange what happens is that the orange flower acting as a female in this case pollinates and this newly formed seed has the genetic make up of the grapefruit and the orange.

Now as this orange forms the flesh that forms around the seed is totally maternal or only from the orange tree. Similar to how in humans the water surrounding the baby in the womb is a product only of the mother.

So when the fruit is fully formed the orange flesh will always have the same flavour as the tree it is from. However the seed has half the genetic make up of the orange and half the genetic make up of the grapefruit which has developed into it's own totally unique new seed. Very similar to how half the chromosomes of the man and women form a totally unique baby with some characteristic's from both parents.


This is why you can't plant an orange seed and expect it to grow into an orange tree exactly like it's parent tree. It could be as in our case a mixture between a grapefruit and an orange.

Which bring us to another question what about Nuts where you are actually eating the seed? Is it possible that your scenario could effect the taste of a nut?

I think that the answer to this question is Yes in a few scenarios.

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Julie says...
I have Valencia orange, grapefruit and Navel orange not far from one another, plus an ex-grapefruit (now bush lemon stock). They taste the same from year to year, and have never affected each other.

Wayne says...
Hello Tom, this might be of interest to you

"How do I sweeten my oranges and mandarins. They usually are slightly sour and acid to eat.
Comments
Mix 60gms of Magnesium sulphate [Epsom salts] 30 mls wetting agent to 4.5L water spray foliage and fruit twice weekly for three weeks. Also apply Magnesium sulphate [Epsom salts] to the soil under the canopy one clenched handful per sq metre." --- I think one handfull is a bit much so perhaps 1/2 to try first.

or

"Sour fruit - Sprinkle about six handfuls of sulphate of potash around the tree and then water in with two teaspoons of Epsom salts mixed into 10 litres of water"

Vita N. says...
I just picked what looked to be exactly like an orange from my grapefruit tree (there is an orange tree next to it). It looked like an orange both inside and out and tasted a bit like one as well (it had a bit of weather damage so was not completely edible).

IanH says...
If I have an orange tree that appears to be cross pollinated and all the fruit tastes like lemons, can I use the fruit like Lemons?

With my lemon tree I normally cure the lemons to make chutney, do you think I could do the same with the oranges? At least this way I'd be able to make use of the fruit.

jakfruit etiquette says...
In Kaki Persimmons, the presence of seeds formed after polination does affect fruit ripening and astringency, ie some normally seedless, non astringent Kaki cultivars will develop not so high quality fruit if pollinated and develop seed( enzymes from the seed now influence fruit ripening)
I've not heard of this in Citrus,I don't think growing oranges next to lemons makes them sour, you would have to eliminate many other factors(season, rootstock, time of picking, rootstock suckers that fruit)before pollination could be considered
But, if your Citrus are excessively seedy due to pollination, the extra pectin may affect your marmalade batch/??

Fred says...
I have had the same lime tree for 20 years. Last year I obtained a tangerine and mandarin orange. This year the limes are larger and taste like oranges. Can anyone explain this to me.

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Mike says...
Like Correy said the pollen can't influence the taste of the materal fruit only subsequent generations.Citrus is like a superspecies where they can all cross freely and oranges and lemons have very tangled parentages.They are mostly mutants with a wide range of genes.Phenotypic plasticity of oranges and lemons means their characteristics/genetic expression changes with their environment and even between seasons.Flesh colour,sourness,skin and size can be dramatically effected by the weather.Sorry about that tangled explanation for what could be going on.

denise says...
The flavor of some fruit can sometimes be affected by the rootstock and it may vary. Anyone growing say orange seeds from a store bought fruit probably wont get a hybrid as they will be from a large 'single species 'planting. It is best to take seed from a close planting of two or more different kinds of citrus to get some nice hybrids. Some cultivars of citrus-especially some orange or lemon are polyembronic, which means that the seed is a jigsaw puzzle of several seed pieces of which typically only one will be a new pollenated seed from pollenation and all the rest will be replicas of the parent and are guarateed to be as good as a grafted tree the same as the tree it came from. I hope I have described it well.