European hybrid fruit: Sharafuga, peach x plum x apricot hybrid

[GrapeNut]

@a_Vivaldi

If we were to get into a theoretical discussion on landraces vs grafted clones, we’d need to work out a lot of pretty thorny issues, since we’d want to really pin down the meaning of things like “adaptable,” and “true from seed.” But, even before that discussion, there’s one other question that looms large: why bother with going through the herculean task of trying to get certain traits stabilized through decades or centuries of in-breeding, when you can just have a curated population with sufficient genetic diversity and more importantly lots of the genes that are actually worth having and clone from it the varieties that express the traits you want?

100% this.

Also, as tbg9b and randyks’ experiences have shown, the inherent difficulties and feasibility of a sexually propagated landrace are species-specific. A peach, apricot, or European plum landrace is doable and has been done. If you’re mostly interested in cider apples, you can grow apples from seed. With citrus, there’s no predicting what you’ll get, or so I have read, not including seeds resulting from apomixis. With grapes, unless you emasculate and hand pollinate every single flower, the majority of your seedlings won’t survive past the seedling stage and those that do will lack vigor.

I don’t envy the scientists trying to breed citrus greening resistance into oranges.