Kinkoji, Marumero

Citrus obovoidea hort. ex I. Takah. RUTACEAE

CRC 3465
PI 539458

Source

Received as seed from, Okitsu, Shizuoka Pref., Japan (via W.P. Bitters, CRC), 1963.

Parentage/origins

Parents unknown.

Rootstocks of accession

Carrizo citrange, C-35 citrange

Season of ripeness at Riverside

October to November

Notes and observations

Large fruit, yellow-orange; globose, stem end rounded and slightly depressed, stylar end flat; rind 5-6 mm thick; core average, slightly hollow; 10-15 seeds, highly polyembryonic; flesh juicy, raggy but tender, taste pleasant, slightly acid, low solids, not bitter; leaves elongated, tips acute, petiole long, average wings. Not commercial variety but excellent quick decline indicator for seedling yellows.

Notes from W.P. Bitters' trip to Japan, 1963: Lg fruit, ht 8.4 cm, wid 8.4 cm, yellow orange color, globose shape, stem end rounded, sl depressed, stylar and flat. Rind 5-6 mm thick, core av., sl hollow, 10-15 seeds, highly polyembryonic, flesh juicy, sl raggy but tender, taste pleasant, sl acid, low solids, not bitter. Lvs elongated, tips acute, petiole long, av. wings. Not a commercial variety but an excellent quick decline indicator for seedling yellows. This accession was heat treated about 1975 for moving out of the tristeza quarantine area to Lindcove. Subsequent Lindcove nucellar block tree was the bud source of 12A-30-5,6. C. obovoidea is briefly described (as Kinkoji) in TCI, Vol. I, pp 551-552.

12/15/1987, EMN: Fruit not globose, is more like chubby pyriform. Otherwise matches Dr. Bitters' 1963 description pretty well.

2/23/1988, EMN: Hodson calls this a pummelo-mandarin hybrid (C.I. pp 551-552). Dr. Bitters thinks it should be housed in the sour orange hybrids. In view of this stand-off, let's keep it in the pummelo hybrids until an impartial referee shows up.

Description from The Citrus Industry Vol. 1 (1967)

"Of limited commercial importance in Japan are several other pummelo-like fruits either known or thought to have originated as chance seedlings.

Kinkôji [C. obovoidea Takahashi]—A medium-small, yellowish-orange, subglobose to obovoid, pleasantly flavored fruit of medium-late maturity and with highly polyembryonic seeds. An old fruit of unknown origin, but apparently a pummelo-mandarin hybrid."