A random thought…. Does anyone know of any research that looks at a possible relationship between blossom scent and apple taste?
I was just smelling some Parkland apple blossoms and they smelled strongly of cinnamon gum. It got me thinking, can blossom scent be used to help in apple breeding selection?
Good question. I know some of my apple trees have really strong smelling scents and some have basically no smell to them at all. That may be a great question to send to some of the apple research centers around the country and to the universities that are doing research as well. I know Ohio State University has a research program and apple research society…
I am not sure if the scent we can smell is so slight that the insects ( bees in particular) can smell the scents better and know when trees have nectar to get. I have not done any research about that.
Perhaps one experiment that could be done is train a dog to identify the apple fruit cultivar, given a flower as input. If the dog can do it by smell consistently, then it would seem there is a relationship between the flower smell and the fruit smell.