Hi all, I just ordered a violet de bordeaux from florida hill nursery.The website said that the little fig was a lab grown tissue culture tree that would be less likely to carry a disease. Do any of you have any experience with this nursery, or any info on tissue culture in general? Thanks. Peace, chad

Just get a VdB cutting, will be much happier

Never ordered anything from them , tissue culture does not cure FMV from what i read only invitro method
does as long as the meristem is taken when it first develops which is done in
under sterilized conditions and then carefully propagated.

Chad,
I've never purchased from Florida Hill but have purchased all the available tissue cultured cultivars grown by Agristart, the usual supplier of TC plants. There have been several topic started on TC, http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=5921283 , http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=6079810 , a forum search will find most. I would agree with Dieseler's comment on TC not removing FMV. I have a Petite Negri TC that is completely symptomatic of FMV (deformed leaves and growth)

Here's a picture of my Bordeaux aka Violette de Bordeaux TC from Wellsprings. It seems to be healthy, its currently growing in a 2 liter SIP and needs to be up potted, its already becoming root bound.
  .

FMV can possibly be removed during the tissue culture process with the use of various drugs/chemicals added for treatment but it's quite difficult and not certainly done.  A nursery industry lab located on UC Davis campus offered to give it a try for me at $2,000 per accession.  They are the lab that handles most tree fruit (not citrus) and vines imported into California and I was told they had tried once before and failed.  It's easier to make promises than actually perform the task.

Additionally, I was told by a person working on fig breeding for several decades that propagation of figs via tissue culture often returns the line to a juvenile state and that it will need to put on much more growth before it begins bearing fruit.  He explained that this is why my Sequoia and Sierra plants were slow to come into production.

Greenfig is right. :)

Two years ago, I ordered seven "Black Mission TC trees from this company.  As advertised, you will more than likely be sent small plugs, and trees with very thin, wiry stems.  I potted them individually into 1 qt. pots and grew them out.  Last year they were 3 ft.- 4 ft. tall, clean,  and growing very well.  Not a visible trace of FMV on any leaves, and worth the nurturing efforts to get clean trees. 

I got exactly what I paid for.  Figs grow very quickly.  With winter TLC you'll have figs in a few years.

Good luck with your trees.


Frank

I'll third what Pete and Harvey said about viruses.

The plant has the pampered to grow more quickly than the virus can spread and the tissue taken from the very tippy top of the plant to get virus free plants.  Sounds simple, but it's not easy. It is done for some plants (especially cane fruits), can't say effectiveness for figs though.

it's really simple.. body cells don't really get rid of virus once it's there. reproductive cells sometimes do. tissue culture is simply taking a tissue sample from the parent tree and growing it into a new tree. if the parent tree had FMV, there is very good change the new TC plant will have FMV. 

as to visual proof of FMV.. doesn't really mean much. this yr, most of my USAD/UCD trees look very clean. better than others i sourced from somewhere else. do i for a sec believe they are FMV free? no. 

Chad,
Harvey posted his "Visit with a Fig Breeder" , http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=6690941

First, I will yield to the experts and their opinions, who have posted answers about tissue cultured figs.  So viruses including FMV are next to impossible to scrub from plant cells, or, the process is very expensive, when done on a commercial scale.  Let's accept that as a fact.

That leads to only one conclusion....the claims made by Florida Hill Nursery of "virus free" fig tree cultures, is a false claim.  If this preceding statement is true, how long can a company stay in business selling contaminated plants that they claim are "virus free"?  Or...FHN went through all the expenses, and they do, in fact, sell virus-free, fig trees.  It's one way or the other.  Just asking.


Frank

I have 2 LSU Purple trees from Florida Hills that my wife gave me for my birthday, good girl.  The trees were very small, as advertised, they have been slow growing and I have only bought larger trees or grown from cuttings since, because of that slowness in growth.

As to the FMV thing, I don't know, I went through a phase where I was concerned about every sign of rust on leaves, every leaf blotch, every curled leaf, every leaf burned by chemicals or bird crap.  I am not sure I even know what true FMV looks like, and as long as the trees grow well and produce figs I really don't care.  If my trees have FMV, it was surely imported from trees or cuttings that were imported from friends, forum members, cuttings gathered, Lowe's because my original tree came from a sucker from a tree that had/has none of the symptoms originally or my cuttings from that tree for the last 7 years, that I know of.

The world learned how to live with fever blisters even after we learned it was a disease and had a name other than fever blister, so how important is FMV?

Just my opinion.

The labs the supports Florida Hills and WellSprings claim to do culture inspection via electron microsope. Most labs of any reputation do have the equipment including the centrifuges and trained staff. Although the virus rods are ~ 18 nm, a properly equipped lab can detect and sort out viable samples ( cells without FMV)  for TC. The cost here which is thousands, is the staff hours and trained staff and the use of fairly expensive equipment.  Are they taking the time to inspect and find viable samples? I doubt we will really know. The small seedlings that come out these suppliers tend to show no signs of FMV, but so do many cuttings I root. Since the TC seedlings start so small, I find their use buying as seedlings to be too much of an annoyance given its years before turning into a bearing tree. I may change my mind when my LSU Purple seedlings twigs 5 years from now are happy and healthy!

Here's a paper that discusses some research behind FMV

tyty is one good example. how do they stay in business? they send out crap all the time, but they are still in business. there's a sucker born every min. i'm not saying we are suckers. but people like me who never grew anything look at tyty web site, minus their video, and think "wow, that nero fig sounds amazing!". 

good thing i found this forum and GW before ordering from them. 

FMV, any virus for that matter, does not have cure. they will get suppressed for whatever reason. herpes simplex 1 and 2 are good example. how many of you can look at a person and say he or she has them? HSV 1 is much easier to notice since it's around mouth and nose, cold sore. but unless that person is having an outbreak, you will never know that person has it. and i don't know of anyone who has non-stop outbreak. HSV 2 is harder to tell unless you have that person naked and get really down on your knees.. even then you might not notice it until you catch it :) like they say.. somethings are forever.. like herpes. 

i grow few figs on purpose to see if FMV actually makes that much of difference in my area. so far, none what so ever. i'm growing few that will not do well in north east. Calvert, Ischia Black, Black Madeira, Barnissotte, and others from USDA/UCD on purpose to see what they will do. only one failed to do much of anything, Ischia Green, but that thing will load itself with figs and they tasted pretty good. 

The reason tissue culture may be less likely to carry disease and viruses (may not will not) is because you should be taking the tissue culture from apical meristem tissue ie the tip bud.  Viruses and diseases are generally less present in the apical meristem as it is the more rapid growth in the plant and less likely to be infected, although depending on the disease or virus and the plant, it cannot guarantee to be disease or virus free, it may be delayed as there is less population of disease or virus in the tissue and take awhile or stress to show it.

To date most difficult plant i have in yard and having fun with them doing different things with is
UcDavis Ischia Black as it has more than 1 FMV strain i firmly believe and documents read state there is more than
1 strain.

Others in yard have FMV and do excellent with it .
I do not worry about FMV as a note some like B.Maderia have it and are our best tasting figs in yard .


Bullet about the nursery you mention they probably do well as most of the folks buying Fig plants probably never
even seen of heard about this forum , we are fortunate.

Well said, but some are claiming to inspect the bud tissues, again its a probability thing, not a guarantee

Thanks for all of the responses and links. I am not overly worried about FMV, I think a few of the trees that I am growing from cuttings have it anyway. I saw a lot of positive feedback about the nursery and some negative. Hope that its the right breed and arrives in good health. I will post pics when it arrives. Side note, this was a total impulse buy and I almost feel like I'm cheating by ordering this way and not growing out from a cutting. Feeling a little guilty now knowing I won't have the satisfaction of knowing I grew this baby from a twig. Damn fig trees, why are they so friggin addicting?  thanks. Peace, Chad

chad, you can always wait till the tree grows up and make a back up by taking cutting. then you will have tree that gives figs and satisfaction of rooting your own :) fig trees are amazing... 

Here is a VdB that I bought from Wellspring towards the end of my growing season last year (around September). I thought I'd give a TC plant a try and at $6.99 I couldn't resist. It was a pencil thin plant as you see here and maybe even skinnier. It went dormant and has been in the garage all winter and is budding nicely now as I have started the shuffle here in NJ last week. 
I will post more pictures as it grows and I am excited at the prospects of my first VdB
 

Brent,
From my observations, the "ability" to fruit comes from the bottom main stem and the roots not the top. Increasing the main stem caliper as quickly as possible by growing as a single stem plant will result in better faster grow and earlier production, whether its pruned back to a bush form or maintained as a tree form. The branches that are allowed to form on that main stem will be the same whether they are high or low, tree or bush form.

The "juvenile" tendency seems to be to produce multiple stems at the base of the tree. The Seedlings that I'm growing exhibit the exact same growth habits as the Tissue Cultured plants. The fig breeder's comments are applicable not only to seedlings and tissue cultured figs but to fig cultivation in general, from my personal observations.

Thanks Pete, I had been wondering about that.

Brent, the breeder told me the bottom 3-4 feet of the tree will never fruit.  He suggested I take wood from the top of my Sierra now that it has started fruiting and start a new tree.  Again, we're talking only of a tree that was planted when in the juvenile state.

The way I see it is that if I have more than one tree from different sources, then the chances of my trees having FMV are very high. So what is the point of worrying about FMV unless I'm willing to get rid of all my trees and have a fresh start. Well it's too late for me. If my trees have FMV then the delicious figs that I ate last year from my first year trees were also infected. I would like to argue that if FMV was such a major concern then UCD would not be spreading it around by sending cuttings to everyone across the US. I'd like to speculate that most nurseries got their supplies from perhaps the same source at some point after the plants were cleared by the USDA.
So the chances of the nursery stock of the most common names being infected are also high.
Last year I received three cuttings of Col De Dame from UCD and two out of three developed a 2 inch trunk at the base in their first year. The third one barely grew. Could it be that the third cutting came from an infected tree at UCD?
My guess is that the conditions under which I grew them had a lot to do with the way they developed.
I rooted two of the cuttings in 5 gallon pots and one in a self watering container. The one in the self watering container took off like a rocket and I thought that this was the one that was going to be the most successful.
I then buried one of the regular 5 gallon pots into the ground as is after cutting off the bottom of the pot and added plant food to the container and hooked it up to a 15 min per day 2 gallon drip irrigation tip.
The results were as follows: The Col de Dame that went into the ground grew like a flag pole also, yielded about a dozen figs that ripened and were my top tasting figs last year. In its first year that tree developed about a 2 inch trunk at the base but was half the height of the one that remained in the self watering container. The later one also developed a thicker trunk and lots of figs but they never ripened. As to the third cutting, it barely grew!
This lead me to firmly believe that the growing conditions are much more important than whether the tree have FMV or not. I'm no longer worried about FMV and more concerned about how I handle my trees.