I recently got a copy of the article Use Of Induced Apomixis In The Breeding Of Figs through our interlibrary loan program. It is an interesting read, and attached for those that are interested.

A few interesting take aways:

1. Edible caprifigs may not be needed to produce new varieties of common fig
2. Seedlings that result from induced apomixis are new varieties and vary widely from the parent
3. Viable seed can be formed (by induced apomixis, not hybrids) by pollinating a fig with mulberry, lily, or other Moraceae pollen
4. Kinetin, and NAA (both readily available) can also be used to induce viable seed formation

Interesting read.

What are apomixis. Is it a che.ical or fertilizer that you root in. This,is,really cool. I will read

In short apomixis is creating a viable seed without pollination. In other words seeds from only a single parent.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apomixis

Merry Christmas!

Ok its a compound used in cunjuction with pollen taken from a mulberry or other pollen injected into female fig. Then those seeds will produce a different fig?? Is this correct. Really cool stuff

I will re read it. Thanks,

Thanks for sharing, this is a paper by Nikitski botanical garden, in the Crimea peninsula. They released many unique hybrids of fruit trees, I have some of their varieties. As for figs they had a few varieties some are common some we rarely hear about. 
Will be reading it thoroughly. 

Theoretically they should have been clones by doubling the chromosomes but methods used must have genetically altered the DNA and produced hybrids.

They were talking about using mulberry polin to inject into a fig. Did i read,this,correctly

The one that made me do a double-take was the lily, why would lily pollen be compatible with a fig?

Wayne, while I only have a rudimentary grasp of genetics, that is what I would have expected as well. In fact I sought out the paper hoping to come up with a way to remove FMV from infected varieties. As it turns out the genes get rearranged in the process, so that would not work. The author does discuss a theory about what they expect is happening, but I only partially understand it.

Figpig, Mike,
Yes mulberry and Lilly pollen as well as others. It is not that the pollen is compatible with fig, it is more of an irritant that induces apomixis. Maybe there are hormones in the pollen that trigger it, I'm not really sure what the mechanism is.

Thanks Andy!

Thought you might like it Greg. Check out the difference in subsequent apomictic generations between the pollen and hormone treatments. I wonder if cold hardiness will be a variable as other traits. Let me know if you give it a try.

> In short apomixis is creating a viable seed without pollination. In other words seeds from only a single parent.

Coincidentally a Christmas theme!

Seriously though this is very interesting. 

Is it saying they found when using foreign pollen the first generation may be good but second generation is always poor?

When it says "forms with valuable recessive traits were detected", does this mean recessive traits were revealed and these traits were positive?

Thank you for posting.

Mic like how,you broke it,down to,simple terms. Pollen is,used as a tool not a parent. And liked the Christmas joke too. Lol

A recessive trait just means it is hidden by dominant traits. Like blue eyes are recessive for example. It has nothing to do with the trait being a positive or negative trait.
Remember learning about Gregor Mendel and his pea plants?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

edit - though I guess if they are saying the traits are valuable, they must be saying that they felt that they were useful traits in some way.

Hi aphahn,
Unfortunately that paper is not precise enough, although it helps in stating that figtrees can be apomictic.
First question I would have is : Is a common fig tree self apomictic ?
That is does a common fig tree able to generate seeds without pollination, since they make fruit without pollination .
In which region where those tests made ? As fig pollen could pollute the results. It is sad that they don't describe more the seedlings, and
especially the time needed for fruit production start.
Well that's a good start at least .

Jds, several of your questions are answered in the paper. They did not detect spontaneous apomixis. The experiments were done in the Crimea, and the researchers took steps to prevent outside pollination.
However, it is just a review paper, and I also want to know more. There are other papers (cited in the references) that give a detailed account of how the seedlings did. I have been unable to get a copy of those papers yet, either in English or the original Russian. I'm not sure if you would have better luck in Europe or not, but it might be worth a try. I would be especially interested in the two papers that cover the variation of seedlings, but any paper on figs by N. K. Arendt would be very informative.

Didn't you have some seedlings that appeared to be apomictic? How are they doing? It will be interesting to see it they are clones of the parent or vary like the induced case.

http://www.referun.com/n/ispolzovanie-razlichnyh-metodov-selektsii-pri-sozdanii-novyh-sortov-inzhira .

Hi Aphahn,
My Zone7 seedlings are the reason why I asked .
Crimea has all zones from 3 to 10 . That does not help me a lot :) . Fun to see that part of the world experimenting with figs ...

As for my seedlings from December 2013 , well, to make a long story short, raising such a fig tree is a pain ! Well even worst, it is a real PAIN and heart breaking .
After lots of adventures, I'm left with 3 growing . 2 still look like unhardened weeds and the thicker half hardened is starting to look like a young tree. But now is Winter ... I hope I don't kill them .
Clearly, if I let them go dormant I'll loose them .

That's an interesting paper, Vladis.   Thank you for posting.   Are you growing the varieties produced by the breeding program at Nikitski-
«Смена», «Ароматный» и «Приятный»,?

Coming from the northern perspective myself, the ficus afganistanus crosses sound intriguing for the possiblity cold-hardiness.   Also the authors' conclusion that such crosses happen on a larger scale in nature, surely some of these have been selected over time and brought into cultivation.

At this time, many varieties of figs and hybrids in the NBS were killed. I grow a hybrid variety of NBS "Sabrutsiya pink", it requires pollination wasp.

One thing I'm curious about with the foreign pollen approach to apomixis is whether or not any of the resulting first generation figs were common figs.  The paper did say that several first generation plants were selected as good producers, but it didn't say that they were common types.  The reason I'm curious is because the persistent gene exists in all common figs, but it isn't donated from the mother, only from the pollen parent.  With common figs half the eggs have the persistent gene and those half abort when they are pollenated.  But with apomixis the eggs are not actually pollenated, they just double their chromosomes from the diploid state back to the haploid state.  In that case one would expect the possibility of seedlings with either no persistent gene, and therefore a Smyrna, or with two copies of the persistent gene, which would presumably act as common figs assuming they don't abort.  The issue with those plants would then be that they cannot be pollenated to produce viable seeds because presumably all the seeds would abort.  I'm curious if any of this has been explored...with figs who knows what they'll really do.

Perhaps more interesting might be the idea of creating a homozygous persistent caprifig.  Could one then have strains of caprifigs that will only pass on the persistent gene and therefore create only persistent seedlings when used to pollenate figs?  If so then the result would be seedlings that are half common figs (the other half being persistent caprifigs) rather than only one quarter common figs.....you'd only have to grow half the number of plants when breeding to find the result you're seeking.  Would be nice.