Saturday I found out about a new satsuma hybrid named 'Orange Frost' or 'Gremoy47' PPAF. It is a hybrid of changsha x satsuma and is reported to be cold hardy, seedless and good tasting. It was developed by Dr. Ying Doo Moy a retired plant breeder from the San Antonio Botanical Garden. It is currently in production at Greenleaf Nursery Company in El Campo, TX and is expected to be released in 2014. There is not much info on the web I could find other than there were a few sold at the Master Gardener Convention in SA last May. Fanick's nusery in San Antonio has a few for sale- I picked one up on Sunday. This sounds like a promsing new variety. Does anyone have experience with 'orange frost'?

Great find Matt. Hopefully you can tell us about it in a year or two.
Terry

Looks like they are releasing 2 other satsumas as well, one named Bumper and another with the enticing name of 'Arctic Frost'. Sounds like they are on their own roots. I assume this means they are rooting cuttings?

These are satsuma-changsha hybrids.

Normally the true zygotic hybrids do not survive in the seed being squeezed out by the nucellars.

Dr. Moy obtained orange frost and bumper by embryo rescue, haven't come across details for artic frost.

Fruits on orange frost are size and taste of satsuma with hardiness similar to changsha. The othet advantage for marketing is that they are almost seedless - 2 or 3seeds per fruit.
Bumper is similar.

It begs the question what other useful zygotic hybrids are being lost in varieties normally considered as being nucellar?

I've been looking for this one for a while. It should be widely released next year, but most likely only in TX. Arctic Frost is supposed to be close to Changsha hardiness with Satsuma seedlessness.

It will probably become available faster than the Gamma Ray seedless Changsha at UGA. That one has been 3 years away for like 10 years now. Who knows when those will fruit....

For those of us in 7b/8a, it would be nice to have a sweetish citrus that we could not have to daily protect for 3 months out of the year.

Dr Moy's series of ChangSats are very promising for us zone pushers. You're right ManFromYard about the endless wait on the irradiated Changshas in GA from Dr Hanna. My Artic Frost has a couple of fruit that look just about ripe. I'll probably pick one this weekend to sample and report back. My Bumper has some fruit on it too but they are still in the process of turning orange and may need another week or two. No fruit on the Orange Frost yet.

Artic Frost fruit:


The ChangSats are discussed at the bottom of this article:

http://plantanswers.com/heroes/YingDoonMoy.html

G, looking forward to hearing what you think of it.

Arctic Frost is a hybrid between Changsha and ? satsuma. Does anyone know what the other parent is?

Where specifically are they sold? There are several Pike Nurseries in the Atlanta area and the one I called doesn't carry it.

Picked up an Arctic Frost yesterday, do they normally have 3 to 4 inch thorns on them?

I forgot to report back on the taste of these ChangSats. I waited until about mid to late December to finish off the rest of the fruit and they were still pretty tart. I was hoping that it would've been sweet by then but they weren't. I'm wondering if they'll taste better and ripen earlier as the trees get older. Early ripening would be key to growing these outside of zone 8b. They only had around 1 to 2 seeds per fruit. They weren't like your typical satsuma -melting flesh, really juicy & sweet. They were more like a tart clementine with firmer flesh.

IlyaC,
That link does not work for me. Can you elaborate further?

Greenleaf Nursery has it in Tarboro, NC, El Campo, TX and in Oklahoma. However, I think they only sell wholesale and you will have to find a dealer. One nursery indicates that it is own-rooted.

G, how cold have you gone so far this year and are your ChangSats outside in this? If so, any damage noted yet? Just curious how cold hardy these guys really are.