Washington Navel Oranges

Garden Notes:

Washington Navel Oranges
By Harry Dedini, Valley Lode District
I was eating an orange last night and I started to wonder about where did it come from? Then I realized it was seedless, and how could it even exist? Was it a male orange? Was it a female orange? This is like who was first, the chicken or the egg? If it wasn’t male or female then it might be parthenogenesis and that’s too big a word to taste good, but some oranges do taste good. Oh no, this is one of those plant sex things. Sometimes I got so confused in plant propagation classes I just didn’t know what to do or not do.Citrus originated in the area of Eastern China to India. Traders brought them to the Middle East, then to North Africa and finally southern Europe. From there the Portuguese sailors brought them to Brazil around 1530. The English had lime on their ships and were nick named limeys. Brazil is one of the top three citrus producers in the world.New citrus trees were propagated from seeds carried on the ship. When one grows plants from seed there is usually a lot of difference, variability, in the seedlings. So one tree had good fruit and others had good thorns.In 1873, a shipment of Bahia eating oranges arrived in Riverside California from Brazil. In that shipment, three trees were noticed to not have seeds like the Bahai variety. They were named the Washington Navel Orange. All of the Washington Navel trees in the world come from these three trees. But no one knows why these trees decided to genetically alter themselves to become seedless.
One of the original trees is still alive in Riverside. The UC Riverside campus area is home to over 700 different citrus varieties and supplies genetic materials that are tested disease free to the rest of the world. In 1969, in my advanced propagation class I saw an orange tree seedling, growing in a flask of auger media that was started with the white pith cells from an orange using meristematic culture method. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. This plant was exactly like its mother and virus free.Nature has been doing genetic engineering from day one. That’s why new plants come about and some disappear. Man is just starting to learn how to help nature along so it might happen in our children’s lifetimes. The major unknown diseases and pest problem areas are virus, genetic and sub cellular. This is the frontier of new research. Researchers are propagating plants by changing gene parts that no one has ever seen, with chemicals in laboratories, which eventually have test tubes of seedlings that have never been in real sunlight.You are already benefiting from this work and this is how we will feed the world in the future. I Think I will get another orange to eat. Do I want a navel innie or an outie? Why do they have navels? Santa will be coming soon, say Good Night, Harry....

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