(6) Every ten days after unwrapping the buds go through the nursery and carefully rub off all stock sprouts in order to force the buds to grow.
All other precautions that are taken in ordinary shield budding must, of course, also be attended to in order to insure success.
Experiments in Shield Budding.
After repeated attempts the shield-budding experiments at the Lamao experiment station with the camia (Averrhoa Bilimbi) and the santol (Sandoricum koetjape) have been successful, and it has also been found that the barobo (Diplodiscus paniculatus), a nut tree indigenous to the Philippines (Dillenia indica), and the sea grape (Coccoloba uvifera), may be propagated by means of shield budding. Detailed information relative to the budding of these plants will be published on the completion of the experiments.
Improvement of Tropical Fruits in the Philippines.
The average fruit is so poor that most foreigners never give any attention to the santol, and the fruit is a drug even in the native markets and enormous quantities annually rot on the ground. Few are aware that there are mutations among the santol trees the fruit of which in point of flavor vies with the best fruits in the Tropics, and that in this respect it is superior even to its celebrated relative, the lanzon (Lansium domesticum), the greatest defects being the large seeds and the adherence of the flesh to the seeds. If the seed in these superior santols were abortive in the same proportion as those in the mangosteen, the now despised santol, with its translucent pulp, separable from the pericarp as that of the mangosteen, subacid, juicy and of a vinous, excellent flavor, would rapidly become one of the most popular fruits in the Tropics. Its thick, tough “rind” should make the santol at least equal to the mangosteen as a shipper.
What is probably the first horticultural, asexually propagated variety of the santol is now being established at the Lamao experiment station from buds obtained by Mr. F. Galang, assistant agricultural inspector, from a tree in Pampanga, the fruit of which is so highly prized locally that the fruit never retails below the relatively high price of 2 centavos apiece even when other santols are so plentiful as to be literally unsalable.
Mr. B. Malvar, assistant agricultural inspector, has obtained in Batangas budwood of a sweet-fruited camia which is also being propagated. This is the first mutation of this kind coming to the attention of the writer.