I've had correspondence with Verman Reyes and told me exciting news about a possible new rootstock cultivars best suited for some of Philippine local conditions. Here's the highlights from Verman:
Citrus macroptera has been observed by Dr. Coronel as a possible rootstock for tropical wet conditions. Dr. Coronel is a Filipino scientist who was commissioned to collect all types of rare fruit trees in the Philippines. In one of the wild stands of citruses, he noticed that while other citruses in the area seem to have all sorts of disease, this one is thriving even with wet clay soils, and doesn't seem to show any kind of disease. Philippines is always rife with various citrus pests and diseases, we almost literally have it all too: canker, CTV, greening diseases, gummosis, phytophtora, etc. But to see an endemic one endure it all and are thriving, there is good potential, at least for the germplasm part.
Many citrus hobbyists in the Philippines are currently germinating many of the seeds collected by Dr. Coronel and will be trying them as rootstocks. Hopefully within 4 years time, we should know the results.
The fruit juices are used as condiments for the local equivalent of "kinilaw", roughly the equivalent of sashimi, and the people in the Visayan region prefer to use that over the more popular calamondin, because the former is relatively free for the pickings in the wild and are thriving.
The local name is "bayag kambing" which translates to goat's testicle, LOL! Not kidding though.
The native origin of C. macroptera is in Melanesia, and how it ended up in Marinduque, Philippines could be very interesting.
These are just preliminary observations and we should need to verify the species independently, which is ongoing right now, and also tried for disease resistance in commercial plots. The various wild stands could be isolated and may not have effective disease vectors, which is really unlikely as these trees were here before the Spaniards exploited the country for 300 years.
Here's an article that barely mentions C. macroptera as a possible agroforestry crop:
http://www.agroforestry.net/tti/Citrus-citrus.pdf
Anyone here have used this as rootstock elsewhere? I am interested to know how cold hardy they are.
