It's been four years since I started this thread, and I have a few years experience propagating Jolly Tiger now, though I'm just beginning to get a handle on it.
My strike rate isn't particularly good. With most of my figs I can now root at least 75% of what I put down, and sometimes 100%. Jolly tiger has been running 50-75% tops. This isn't really so bad, but the reversion rate to all green has been a problem. I only take cuttings from branches that have been producing variegated foliage. Nonetheless, of the cuttings that I've rooted in the last year:
8 have reverted to the point that I don't think I can recover the variegation
4 have more reversion than variegation, and I don't know if I can prune them enough to make them as stable as my parent plants
5 are reliably variegated to the point that I'm comfortable selling or trading them as what they are
That's five plants with the desired characteristics for thirty or so cuttings.
I've noticed that having visible striping on the wood increases the success rate, and it's important to catch non-variegated branches immediately on new propagations, before they can suppress the variegated growth. Light, water, fertilizer, and pot size do not seem to have much affect on variegation (beyond their normal affect on suckering and growth habit). All green branches grow faster than variegated ones, though, of course.
My original plant is eight feet, beautifully variegated, and bore 4-6 dozen fruit this year in the corner of the greenhouse. It does throw the occasional all green or all white branch, but that's easily remedied. My main propagation trees (pruned to produce lots of branches on a shorter bush) also look good. As soon as I clear out all of these propagated plants, I'll start another round of variegated cuttings and try to do better.
