An easy to read Penn State article from 2018 on history of apples over the years.
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The author is Rich Marini. He founded the Horticultural Science program at Penn State and is a past department chair. He has also been the Editor in chief of Journal of the American Pomological Society for several decades.
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Good information.
I think āimprovementā has different meanings for some people than for others though.
(Reminds me of tomato breeding āimprovementsā over the yearsā¦improved production and handling and storage does not mean IMPROVED compared to old favorites from the home garden.) (Tasteless red cardboard can be ok in your salad or on your hamburger in Feb. but not if you can get local produce that has much preferred eating qualities.)
Breeding apples that have 5 mostly sweet cultivars in their family tree is potentially setting apples up for a disease of some sort to obliterate apples like the potato blight in Ireland or the corn blight in the late 1960ās.
Diversity has been tossed in favor of more red crisp apples that contain plenty of sugar.
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Yeap. Like my plans with Blairmont. Bred to be a possible production apple across the south. Has a lot of positive attributes. Good Fruity, mild sweet taste. Iām banking on a cross to firm up the texture and keeping.
Same as my evil plan for Malus Micromalus. A highly disease resistant variant with a so-so not astringent fruit will breed with a bigger real domestic apple. The goal? A hard to kill small tree with high production of tasty small apple for home growers. Low maintenance, decent keeping.
I would love to do something with the big, wide burly Russian Vityaz Apple. A very imposing long lived tree with fairly decent larg-ish fruit. But war sanctions probably prevent it. It is truly the Live Oak of Apple trees.
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I agree with you. āImprovementā means different thing to different people and to different companies. Big commercial orchards want apples that ripen all at one time so they pick them once and move on to the next orchard to pick. People/ consumers now want a red apple that is crisp and sweet unless you want a tart apple, then Granny Smith is your go to apple.
Apple diversity helps keep apples from getting the same faults or diseases as each other.
There is an excellent article about exactly the same thing I read some years back and opened my eyes as to what the apple breeders are trying to do. It mentioned how this may not be such a good thing in the future. It was a great read.
The Penn State here was a good read. Thank you for posting it. Interesting information.
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And it (diversity) ups your odds of having something to eat from at least one tree every season. Trees (particularly apples and particularly those prone to biennial bearing) donāt perform the same every year. Iām struck not only by how much the quantity varies but also by how much my enjoyment of the crop changes. I remember a tree that produced mediocre fruit this year had a spectacular crop of highly flavored apples a couple of years ago. This year it was Milo Gibsonās turn. So it goes!
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Biennial bearing is often due to insufficient mineral resources. This inhibits development of enzymes and proteins necessary for all stages of production. Some cultivars have high, inefficient metabolism rates which exacerbate the situation.
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