Hello dragon fruit enthusiasts! This is Jay, with Hybridizing Dragon Fruit, where we teach YOU how to make your very own dragon fruit varieties! Today’s video is one of THE most important steps you need to take before sharing your creations. We are going to talk about: Evaluating your hybrids! And by the END of this video you are going to know all the tricks of the trade to ensure your varieties come out, absolutely… AMAZING!

In order to ensure you are creating only the highest quality hybrids, your potential variety must pass a number of rigorous tests before it’s ready to be distributed to growers everywhere. So, when is the right time to start evaluating your new hybrids? Well you want to, right from the start, when your seedlings are only a couple months old. Now is going to be the best time to sprout as many as you can, as it will take the least amount of space when they are this size. What you are looking for at this stage, are outliers that display unique qualities.

But before we begin, it’s important to remember that in order to properly evaluate your seedlings, the growth conditions have to be identical. That means that some of the seedlings in your setup cannot get more light than others, be at different temperatures, or receive more or less water or nutrients. Differences in any of these factors will skew the results too much to make any reliable observations about phenotype (the expression of a trait).

Identify those that seem to grow the fastest. These will be the priority when at the seedling stage. Those that display incredible vigor should be tested to see if this is sustained vigor (the gold standard) or simply temporary vigor. If you grow out enough seedlings, you might even get lucky and find one with a meaningful expression of ‘hybrid vigor’, which tends to be a rare occurrence.

While seedlings often times present larger due to variance in growth rates from slow to superior, those with extreme ‘hybrid vigor’ can be noticeably larger than their siblings. Because this expression is such a rare occurrence among seedlings this is more of an icing on the cake situation, rather than something you make a growing requirement. As this is not guaranteed to happen in even extreme sample sizes, nor does it guarantee better flavor! So keep that in mind.

Other genetic variances should absolutely be explored as well. For example: you might have a few hundred seedlings growing and a few of them have different colored tips than the rest. Or perhaps, the branch shape is noticeably different or unique in some way to what is commonly seen in this batch of seedlings. These are all examples of genetic variance, from recessive genes and possible mutations, which may or may not lead to something worthwhile down the road. Some would argue that this is one of the most crucial steps in the hybridizing process. So keep your eyes peeled, and record notes on your seedlings of interest, for when it comes time to start grafting.

The next stage of evaluation happens as soon as the graft takes place. Watch closely and record not only the day of each graft you make, but take a picture of it as well. This will come in handy in a few weeks time. In the next few days following your graft, be sure to check in on your scions daily and note the quality of the graft. Those grafts done from young flesh to young flesh are always going to heal faster under the proper conditions, and thereby start growing faster than those done to mature flesh. Noting such things will help you to notice trends in the growth rates of your new batch of freshly grafted hybrids despite the grafting styles that may vary the more grafts you complete. Once the grafts have fully healed they can be acclimated to the sun slowly over the course of a week or two and then placed in their new home.

This is the point where the very first critical evaluations will take place. Failures will be identified and culled to make room for dragons with superior genetics, during the growth phase of your new hybrid. Which can take anywhere from a few months to over a year depending on your parents and climate. It’s during this critical time that you need to be observing each seedlings phenotype very closely.

Those that show defects such as: slow or stunted growth, abnormal branch development, constant disease, etc, need to be destroyed right from the get-go. Only the strong may survive if you are to realize your dream of creating high quality dragon fruit varieties! You spend quite a lot of time nurturing these new lives you have created, and inevitably become attached. So, it may seem cold hearted to just cut them down, but this is an important part of hybridizing and has to be done. It does get easier with time, I promise you…

Once the growth phase has ended and your remaining hybrids have starting producing mature branches, the flowering and fruiting stage of evaluation is at hand. This is by far the most exciting time of growing your own hybrids. The anticipation is absolutely incredible! Upon budding you get your first real insight into what you are growing. Especially so, if your parents have very different looking fruit. You will see almost a sliding scale of how much it looks like either parent and may foreshadow characteristics favoring either parent. The only way to find out is to see it through to its conclusion!

And with that said, this is a great time to get out your notes again and start recording the dates that your buds first appeared. I like to take pictures of the developing buds and subsequent flowers for reference and comparison. You want to also note and picture the flowers opening, noting the time of day it began. A few other very important observations you want to make are: the number of flowers produced, the stamen length, the thickness of both the stamen and stigma, the flower size, and the amount of pollen produced.

If you are growing a stenopterus hybrid, hoping to get a particular flower color or shape, now will be the time to decide if your hybrid passes or is cut down depending on your desired result. If you have multiple flowers on your hybrid it’s also recommended that you cross pollinate at least one to test the fruit, and if you have another flower to spare, this is a wonderful time to test for self fertility and save some valuable time later (be sure to emasculate the flower as shown in our video “crossing, self pollinating”). After you have successfully self pollinated your first flower, cross pollinate your remaining flowers with a dragon preferably from another species altogether (such as a: Setaceus, Polyrhizus, etc) to ensure the best chances of a successful pollination. Now, the waiting game begins…

Once your developing fruit blushes (turns color) that signals that your fruit is nearly ready. It’s time to get out your notes once again, as it’s nearly time to evaluate your very first round of fruit! If you are lucky enough to have multiple fruit fully developed it’s highly recommended that you pick each one at a different progressive date to determine when the fruit is at its peak flavor, as this will vary from variety to variety. This is a huge win for your hybrid if it can to do this in its first flush, though if it does not, it’s nothing to worry about at this point. Many dragons make few or small fruit on their first flush.

Once picked be sure to take pictures of the fruit before cutting into it. If you have a scale, now is a great time to record its weight and size. Keep in mind that as many dragon fruit plants mature their fruit may change slightly in flavor and/or size, though not all do, to be fair. So treat this as only an initial fruit evaluation and only partially representative of what this plant may be capable of. It should be enough to know if the plant is worthy of continuing on to the final evaluations, or if it’s time to be cut down though.

After recording its weight and size, now comes the most exciting part of being a hybridizer, and that is cutting into a fruit that you created yourself. What color will it be? What will it taste like? This excitement is what it’s all about! After picturing and noting the color and seed to flesh ratio, it’s time to break out the brix refractometer and take a reading.

Taste is a rather subjective thing, so there is no hard fast rule on what is good and what is bad beyond YOUR personal preferences. I have sampled fruit that is very pleasant in flavor with brix levels as low as 16 in my experience, though many people generally prefer their fruit at a reading somewhere around 17-19, which is considered a high brix score. There are even varieties that go well in excess of 20+ brix, these are considered some of the sweetest available but often take excessive amounts of time for the fruit to develop. As a side note, if you are trying to create a commercially viable variety, note the thickness of the skin. Fruit with thick skins better resist damage during shipping and handling of the fruit and that is incredibly important. So, is self fertility.

Well, now that you have pictured, measured, weighed, and documented nearly everything about your fruit, the time has finally come! Time to evaluate your fruit’s flavor, texture, and juiciness! Now, while there are many dragon fruit plants that successfully mimic the flavors of other types of fruits (like purple haze tasting like grapes for instance), not all dragons do this and most will have very unique flavors that are all their own. However, if you happen to notice specific flavor notes, you should absolutely record it for future reference and breeding.

While things like texture and juiciness are somewhat subjective, most will agree that a somewhat firm texture is generally preferred to a mushy one, and juiciness is often preferable to a more dry fruit. After your evaluation has completed, be sure to take a mature cutting of your hybrid and start rooting it immediately. More on this later on…

Now that you have completed multiple rounds of evaluations throughout the lifetime of your last remaining hybrids. Unfortunately your job is still not done! As a matter of fact, you just now hit the halfway mark. I know you are probably thinking. “Wait!? What!? Halfway!? I thought we were done here! What’s left to do now!?”.

Well, now comes the hardest part of being a hybridizer… After you have nurtured a plant from seed for the better part of a year now, constantly tending to it and watching it grow each day. Building hopes and becoming excited with every test passed. And even after passing every… single… evaluation. It’s now up on the chopping block… yet again, one final time.

The final stage of evaluation is the most important of them all. Degrafting! Now that you are sure you have a hybrid worthy of becoming its own variety, it needs to be tested on its own roots. While grafting is a wonderful tool to help us create hybrids faster, it also will skew the results of your final evaluations. Your hybrid gets quite a number of benefits from your chosen rootstock that help it. Such as possible increases in growth rate, increased fruit size, resistances to certain weather conditions or insects, and root vigor to name a few.

In order to know how strong and resilient your dragon truly is, it must not only grow, but thrive on its very own roots. It’s only then you can observe its actual phenotype. Not only is it important that you allow your new hybrid to grow on it’s own, but to allow it to go through an entire season own its own. This way you can observe how hardy it really is, the average fruit size, among many other things.

If you have friends in other climates than yours, this is also a great time to share your cuttings with them, so they can test your hybrid under their growing conditions, as well! This can tell you quite a bit about your plants actual traits, so it’s very highly recommended! Your hybrid may do very well in your climate but it possibly may not in another, so this is something you should absolutely test for…

So, by starting off with a large sample size and evaluating your seedlings multiple times thorough out it’s life cycle. You will be able to identify the very best of the best, and ensure that in the end, you will grow something worthy of all your hard work!

If you would like to learn more about creating your own dragonfruit hybrids, please give us a thumbs up, a subscribe, and be sure to join our Facebook group @Facebook.com/groups/HybridizingDragonFruit. And if you want to learn more about our very own HDF exclusive hybrids, be sure to check out HybridizingDragonFruit.com!

Grow something… AMAZING!