Butia x Cocos nucifera

[Phoenikakias]

There is a French grower somewhere in the tropical overseas territories, who presents a coconut look alike juvenile plant and claims also that it is a hybrid with Jubaea. This is presented in f/b in the group Hybrid Palm trees world. Voila the picture posted there. Now draw your own conclusions.

[Zeeth]

14 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

There is a French grower somewhere in the tropical overseas territories, who presents a coconut look alike juvenile plant and claims also that it is a hybrid with Jubaea. This is presented in f/b in the group Hybrid Palm trees world. Voila the picture posted there. Now draw your own conclusions.

Pure coconut

[Pal Meir]

27 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

There is a French grower somewhere in the tropical overseas territories, who presents a coconut look alike juvenile plant and claims also that it is a hybrid with Jubaea. This is presented in f/b in the group Hybrid Palm trees world. Voila the picture posted there. Now draw your own conclusions.

I too can’t detect any Butia-like features …

[Phoenikakias]

29 minutes ago, Pal Meir said:

I too can’t detect any Butia-like features …

Actually I wrote Jubaea as the other parent, but the essence of your statement is still valid.

[Pal Meir]

10 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

Actually I wrote Jubaea as the other parent, but the essence of your statement is still valid.

Oops, I meant »Jubaea«, I mixed it with the title of this thread …

[Mohsen]

7 hours ago, Phoenikakias said:

There is a French grower somewhere in the tropical overseas territories, who presents a coconut look alike juvenile plant and claims also that it is a hybrid with Jubaea. This is presented in f/b in the group Hybrid Palm trees world. Voila the picture posted there. Now draw your own conclusions.

so if it has really  some Jubaea in it but do look like pure coconut then so be it as long as it can survive in colder area like Sydney ..but if it looks like pure Coconut but has also same cold hardy as pure Coconut so  what was the point of crossing anyway ?

[Sanips]

20 hours ago, Phoenikakias said:

There is a French grower somewhere in the tropical overseas territories, who presents a coconut look alike juvenile plant and claims also that it is a hybrid with Jubaea. This is presented in f/b in the group Hybrid Palm trees world. Voila the picture posted there. Now draw your own conclusions.

I don't see any Jubaea on it neither. Being a F1 cross, should it show 50/50 characteristics from both parents? I don't find the fb group (I would like to see the coments).

[Pal Meir]

1 hour ago, Sanips said:

I don't see any Jubaea on it neither. Being a F1 cross, should it show 50/50 characteristics from both parents? I don't find the fb group (I would like to see the coments).

I could only find this comment, and I understand that Negronis Cailän intends to use pollen for his (pure) coconut he has posted (and not that the posted pic is already a hybrid):
»Sorry for the delay, the box has arrived! Thank you Mr. Jean-Cristophe Jacon- carrier for the opportunity to use your Jubaea Pollen in my Coconut palms for first time! And you too Enrico Capecchi with the Butia dust. I'm very grateful guys. Cocos x Jubaea and Cocos x Butia are both the future«

[Pal Meir]

I meant of course not that he wants to use the pollen for the posted juvenile palm but for the parent coconuts, or am I wrong? Or should the posted pic already represent a »cross« of pollination done a couple years before? @Phoenikakias

[Phoenikakias]

Pal, the whole discussion in this f/b - thread is quite surreal. I read what you read and I can understand what you can also understand. The thread brgins with a clear question whether this is a hybrid (refering of course to the posted picture) and answer from picture's author is positive! Now what can one understand?

[Sanips]

It seems a confusing conversation. Seeing that the palm has a postage box at its feet I think that package contained the Jubaea pollen so the cross in not made (yet).

 

Edit: I found the conversation and the cross is not made yet. He is going to cross a Golden Malayan with the Jubaea. He has several varieties of cocos but the Golden Malayan is the only one he has flowering (the rest are very young to do it). Mistery resolved.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Sanips

[XYZ]

Optimistic much?

Since there seems to be an inordinate amount of interest here in the possibilities of coconut hybridization it seems a shame that the discussion is constantly muddied by this type of false lead and promises of "mañana". I agree a set of clear images showing a well-developed palm/s with influence on leaf architecture from both putative parents would be quite helpful. Photos of young seedlings are, IMO, about as much value as the one above that promises a future filled with coco hybrids based on a young coco palm and a cardboard box.

For anyone interested in documenting what they believe are hybrid palms, there are commercial labs in the US that can determine chromosome counts from leaf tissue samples  for prices that might be worth their effort. I know of one lab in Pac NW who has recently done ploidy determinations on orchids for an acquaintance of mine and she was very pleased with both the price and the results. I believe they are using flow cytometry to count chromosomes. I intend to try them out this month to explore the possibility of polyploidy in some agaves I have. Since Pal has shared a cladogram of some coccoids in this thread, I assume that all of those spp have been karyotyped. Thus, it should be a relatively straightforward thing to determine significant chromosomal variance from known seed parent. Anyone here with a good handle on these lab techniques and coccoids can correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

Jay

 

[Zeeth]

26 minutes ago, stone jaguar said:

Optimistic much?

Since there seems to be an inordinate amount of interest here in the possibilities of coconut hybridization it seems a shame that the discussion is constantly muddied by this type of false lead and promises of "mañana". I agree a set of clear images showing a well-developed palm/s with influence on leaf architecture from both putative parents would be quite helpful. Photos of young seedlings are, IMO, about as much value as the one above that promises a future filled with coco hybrids based on a young coco palm and a cardboard box.

For anyone interested in documenting what they believe are hybrid palms, there are commercial labs in the US that can determine chromosome counts from leaf tissue samples  for prices that might be worth their effort. I know of one lab in Pac NW who has recently done ploidy determinations on orchids for an acquaintance of mine and she was very pleased with both the price and the results. I believe they are using flow cytometry to count chromosomes. I intend to try them out this month to explore the possibility of polyploidy in some agaves I have. Since Pal has shared a cladogram of some coccoids in this thread, I assume that all of those spp have been karyotyped. Thus, it should be a relatively straightforward thing to determine significant chromosomal variance from known seed parent. Anyone here with a good handle on these lab techniques and coccoids can correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

Jay

 

Chromosome count alone wouldn't be of much use, as Cocos, Butia, Jubaea and Syagrus all have 32 chromosomes (2n = 32). Obviously there are other ways to verify a hybrid genetically, but I just wanted to clarify that point.

[XYZ]

Thanks for the clarification on uniformity of chromosome count. My bad. What procedure would you suggest to document hybrid origin of a palm in this subfamily? Full DNA analysis looking for distinct genetic markers?

Assume all these recognized spp have unique karyotypes. Do you know if this is indeed the case? If so, alternate route for proof of parentage that might be less costly.

J

[Zeeth]

I would think that PCR would probably be the best way to verify it in this case, using micro-satellite markers to compare the two potential parents to the suspected hybrid. I'm more familiar with the process as far as it relates to humans (and Drosophila), but I would presume that the there shouldn't be much difference in this case. 

[Mandrew968]

On 11/6/2016, 3:18:06, stone jaguar said:

Thanks for the clarification on uniformity of chromosome count. My bad. What procedure would you suggest to document hybrid origin of a palm in this subfamily? Full DNA analysis looking for distinct genetic markers?

Assume all these recognized spp have unique karyotypes. Do you know if this is indeed the case? If so, alternate route for proof of parentage that might be less costly.

J

It's quite the rarity when different chromosome parents make a hybrid--like a bad puzzle piece. Sometimes it happens though, but the outcome is always sterile.

To Clarify to all--There is no coconut hybrid that any of us know of. Very simple. Just like bigfoot; no evidence, yet there is enough interest and conjecture to produce a slew of tv shows.

[Zeeth]

1 hour ago, Mandrew968 said:

It's quite the rarity when different chromosome parents make a hybrid--like a bad puzzle piece. Sometimes it happens though, but the outcome is always sterile.

The outcome is not always sterile. There are verified cases of animal and plant hybrids of parents with mismatched chromosome counts that have turned out to be fertile and have produced offspring, and allopolyploidy in plant hybrids with mismatched chromosome counts are typically fully fertile (Brassicoraphanus as an example).

That said, it doesn't even apply in this case, because Cocos, Syagrus, Butia and Jubaea all have 16 pairs of chromosomes. 

This is not me saying that a coconut hybrid exists or even can exist though, just clarifying a few points.

[awkonradi]

For what it's worth, here are the other four PalmTalk threads regarding the Butia x Cocos topic.

 

[awkonradi]

And here are ErikSJI's photographs of a specimen from a deliberate Butia x Cocos hybridization attempt, performed by Mark Lynn in 2005.

http://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/29228-butia-x-cocos-n/&do=findComment&comment=474021

http://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/25116-butia-x-cocos-nucifera/&do=findComment&comment=773807

 

[Mandrew968]

3 hours ago, Zeeth said:

The outcome is not always sterile. There are verified cases of animal and plant hybrids of parents with mismatched chromosome counts that have turned out to be fertile and have produced offspring, and allopolyploidy in plant hybrids with mismatched chromosome counts are typically fully fertile (Brassicoraphanus as an example).

That said, it doesn't even apply in this case, because Cocos, Syagrus, Butia and Jubaea all have 16 pairs of chromosomes. 

This is not me saying that a coconut hybrid exists or even can exist though, just clarifying a few points.

Thanks Keith--didn't know that. Glad to have multiple intelligent people on this forum to help share knowledge! I was specifically thinking the horse and donkey hybrid--their chromosomes are not equal and the offspring is almost always sterile (but not always). I was also assuming that foxy ladies were a chromosome mismatch, but i was assuming...

[gyuseppe]

if shut this topic, I would be very happy, you can not always talk endlessly  of this

[Zeeth]

6 hours ago, Mandrew968 said:

Thanks Keith--didn't know that. Glad to have multiple intelligent people on this forum to help share knowledge! I was specifically thinking the horse and donkey hybrid--their chromosomes are not equal and the offspring is almost always sterile (but not always). I was also assuming that foxy ladies were a chromosome mismatch, but i was assuming...

Glad to share any concrete knowledge that I can! From the literature, I was able to find that Wodyetia has 16 pairs of chromosomes (in "New Chromosome Counts in the Palmae" by Margaret A. T. Johnson), and I also found a paper that suggests that Veitchia does as well (in "A Revision of Veitchia" by Scott Zona). 

While looking for that info, I also found some literature saying that most palm genera have have 16 pairs, with some exceptions (All of the palms in the subtribe Euterpeinae, as well as Roystonea, which all have 18 pairs, and some polyploid palms, like Voanioala, which has 298 pairs of chromosomes). 

So it seems safe to say that some palm hybrids with parents that have the same number of chromosomes can still usually be sterile, so it seems to be something else at play. The same can be said for hybrids between coconuts and other palms in the Attaleniae sub-tribe. As you can see with the Attaleniae cladogram, coconuts are more closely related to Syagrus than Syagrus is to Butia, which hybridize easily. I'm not sure if it's something structural or if the specific genes that are different happen to make the hybrid non-viable, but it's interesting nonetheless. 

[foxtail]

[Stevetoad]

1 minute ago, foxtail said:

Case closed. All these years later and I still want to know if the coconuts are jelly filled

[XYZ]

I agree. This incredible and amazingly non-doctored image certainly makes the hybrid "settled science"!

Onwards and upwards, folks.

 

[Mandrew968]

9 hours ago, stone jaguar said:

I agree. This incredible and amazingly non-doctored image certainly makes the hybrid "settled science"!

Onwards and upwards, folks.

 

[Phoenikakias]

It looks to me rather like a freaky Butia with multiple cojones.

[foxtail]

22 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

It looks to me rather like a freaky Butia with multiple cojones.