Fruit Breeding for the Home Garden

General Fruit Growing
#9

I get the games the nurseries play. And all the legal machinations give me a headache.

I’m more interested in who’s bucking the system. Breeding at home, or making a point to breed for the home market. I strongly suspect that the retail nurseries (for all that they like to show off photos of their testing and breeding nurseries) actually do much breeding themselves. They’d rather buy the rights to something and just propagate - if they can get exclusive rights to do so.

I do realize that really great new varieties are pretty random. But I wonder if you couldn’t get some pretty cool things from someone who just likes to putter with something on their own time and agenda.

1 Like
#10

Is not that random; two great apples are very likely to give you at the very least a decent apple. Aiming for more specificity; breeding a given apple with more fire blight resistance, earlier fruiting, less tannins, more crunch, it takes thousands of saplings and selections. Or it takes a sport, an apple tree you just notice that unlike all others of the same breed it has something different going for it.

The thing is that with 7,500 apple varieties and 2,500 being grown in the U.S. alone, all proven performers, there is no shortage of great apples. But it cost us nothing to cross pollinate, grow a sapling, and graft it into another tree to see what happens. My all time favorite Prairie Magic was a chance sapling. The Franklin Cider I’m trying to see if it can grow in Alaska was a 60 year old wild tree until “discovered” and marketed. Clair #9, great apple! Here in Alaska it would be recognized by most orchardist as it was the creation of Clair Lammers who spent decades growing and breeding apple trees in Fairbanks (home of -40f winters).

2 Likes
#11

Nope. Those are product lines as well. They sell multiple patented sports under the name ‘Pink Lady’. Same with other varieties.

#12

I take it you didn’t bother to google up “Apple varieties trademark”.

Here you go:

#13

McIntosh apples are not trademarked. Many companies have lost their trademarks because they became the proper name of the product. Freon is an example.

1 Like
#14

nil, I appreciate what you are trying to say but my understanding is that a patent expires after the 20 year period and a name trademark is in perpetuity. So for example, I have recently purchased both Cripps Pink AND Pink Lady apples from the grocery store. Same apple (yes they could be different sports as you pointed out, Macintosh has many too) but one seller has paid the royalty for the trademark and one did not and uses the cultivar name instead of the trademark name. It is still illegal for ME or anyone else to sell Cripps Pink as Pink Lady unless you have purchased rights to the trademark (assuming the trademark was kept valid in the USA in my case).

I put a pretty good explanation link on this thread from a nursery that goes over the nuances in detail Beginner Grafting Guide

#15

That’s a whole different conversation altogether. Point being made is that an apple variety can be trademarked, and can be protected for as long as the trademark owner sees value in it. If they screw up their ownership that’s part of that other conversation.

#16

I wanted to point out that breeding efforts vary greatly based on the species you are interested in. Apples are a “good luck with that” scenario as has been pointed out. Pawpaw, on the other hand, is know to reproduce fairly close to the parent plants by comparison. As such I plan to intentionally cross Mango with Chapell to select for faster tree growth (which should fruit faster too). I’ll also be looking for some interesting combinations like Al Horn’s White x Kentucky Champion or Summer Delight to try to get an earlier season white fleshed fruit. My other idea is to cross the Freestones (Marshmallow, Honeydew, Cantaloupe) with Benson and others with thick skin/longer shelf life to try and produce a cultivar that ships well and is easy to remove the seeds from, which I see as the proper direction to make the fruit more commercially viable for mass markets.

3 Likes
#17

Say rather, you can breed for specific traits, but wild success is somewhat random.

You might want to give a look at Michigan State’s new cider apple program. They’re just starting to really go for that market.

Also watch the progress of this gentleman:
https://twitter.com/CiderappleDNA?s=20

#18

This was the sort of thing I was asking about. :slight_smile:

I think it’s also somewhat easier to work with species that have a shorter turn-around time from seed to fruit, so you can tell what you’ve got.

2 Likes
#19

I had seen in a thread from @scottfsmith that he was cutting buds off of seedlings and putting them on established trees to expedite the fruiting process by a few years to see if he had any “winners”. I’m not sure how many other people do this but it’s a very viable method in my opinion if you have established “rootstock”.

1 Like
#20

I think the idea is that the name can be trademarked. The plant and fruit, when the patent expires, can be sold, propagated etc… just not using the trademarked name. For example, if you are a fan of Pink Lady® apples one might suggest that you plant a Cripps Pink tree.

#21

I’m in Alaska. Our season is ridiculously intense with 20-hour sunlight in the summer solstice, but it is equally ridiculously short with between 105 and 150 frost free days (90%/10% probability). The sad thing about hard cider apples is that they are usually late season apples. Most are harvested in October when our freeze times can start by mid September.

Last year I planted two Franklin Cider apple trees to test and see if they are hardy enough and can ripen fruit early enough. So far they went through the first winter without issues and are flowering. I should find out soon enough if they will work here.

2 Likes
#22

I have been growing out fruit trees from seeds and making crosses for about 7 years now and I still think it is the most wonderful thing to do. Making crosses and thinking about what the fruits could look and taste like is such a wonderful and imaginative activity that has never lost it’s initial attraction to me: the fact that you can create something entirely new, alive and uniquely flavored is so enticing!

All the things you study and learn along the way - like genetics and botany - are also just so incredibly interesting, that I can only recommend it to everyone. - As an activity or past-time that is thoroughly enjoyable and interesting. This kind of breeding gives plenty of good, nice enough and interesting results, even in a relatively small garden with small numbers to keep it interesting for a long time. Besides that it is very easy to do if you are willing to do it over a longer period of time and have the curiosity and the patience for it.

Other than that, I would say one should not have any major expectations of it in terms of value or return on investment. Just by doing it for a couple of years, you start to realize a couple of things that all other breeders have already said a hundred times but that somehow are hard to imagine when you start out. And those thing have everything to do with the value, or market value, or investment value, and not at all with all the interesting techniques, novelties and your creativity - if you would want to keep that in mind.

To my experience:

The market value of your new tree has nothing to do with your choice of parents or your cross or the flavor or the appearance of the fruit. Nor with how many seedlings you grew out over how many years and that you selected the best of the best. The only thing that counts is over how many years and against how many other cultivars you have evaluated your new tree in a solid scientific reliable context and how it compares to these other known varieties in yield, disease resistance, climatic conditions and under pest pressure. It is the gathering of this information what will determine for 99% the market value of your new tree, no matter if it is for the home garden or the production market.

This means you, or anyone else will need to set up a program where it compares your best tree or plant over several years against all the market standards. That is the investment that anyone who will bring the tree to market wants to recuperate.

Otherwise, as often stated in this forum by the professional growers, there are plenty of people who swear that the tree in their yard never gets peach leaf curl, or is the sweetest, biggest, most wonderful fruit, and that may be true under their conditions.

But the limiting factor and most costly investment is not the number of plants, terrain or generations of breeding - it is in the quality and reliability of the evaluation of your new proposed plant.

So I see this backyard breeding more the way I see fine art or music - something really interesting and enriching to practice for yourself, but there are many, many easier ways to make a living. As an investment or a plan to make a little money on the side it is has almost no potential at all, in my view, unless you are in the nursery business yourself already, or you want to make this your full time job.

That said, it is very possible, even very likely, that you will find a very good fruit after a while. That fruit can be distributed and gain a certain reputation locally and even become a standard or legendary variety. That is probable and even likely in my opinion. So the door is open to contributing a ne and novel fruit variety for posterity - no problem. It is just not easy to do that and make money from it at the same time.

7 Likes
#23

I have Otterson at ‘3rd leaf’ but it’s on Antonovka, so probably 3 more to bear.

That seemed to be the top of the crop from Michigan experimentation.

#24

Been growing out apples from seed. My interest in that lead me to skillcult’s youtube channel and his store. Other than that, I grew out a bunch of rosemary from seed this year. My unscientific and completely unresearched goal is a cultivar that survives zone 5 and is tasty.

1 Like
#25

I disagree what was said about MSU. They have numerous cherry and blueberry cultivars sold in the home market. They also provide paid and free assistance to the home grower. It’s who I go to when I need answers.
Usually universities develop for the commercial market. But if one shows promise only for the home market they will develop it. Numerous examples exist such as the Ka-bluey blueberry. Too soft for the commercial market Is what I heard. Exclusive rights were sold to Gardens Alive which sells it at its subsidiary nurseries like Gurneys. I found the texture fairly firm, it’s not soft. The flavor is premium excellence. One of the best I have tasted.
I breed mostly brambles but have not had that much time Lynn’s Black is my best. A large primocane fruiting black raspberry my goal was to produce a better tasting primocane berry. It is better but still not as good as floricane berries. It has the added benefit of huge berries and very good disease resistance. My next goal is to produce a primocane fruiting yellow cap. I developed Irene a pink raspberry. I’m trying for orange. Some exist in Europe but not sold here. Valentine is one of those. Not the ground raspberry with the same name.
I also wast to cross Indian free peach with Arctic Glo nectarine to create an earlier ripening red flesh peach. I had three of them but the seedlings died in an early fall freeze. As did a number of plants in my area. Once developed I would like to cross with the nectaplum to get a large red fleshed nectarine with purple leaves. I’d do have a cross of Indian free and the nectaplum and it does have purple leaves.

3 Likes
#26

I do some crosses with ornamental plants (lilium). I have an interest in making tart/sweet cherry crosses and now have some of the parents that would allow me to make the crosses. Unfortunately, dwarfing rootstock is hard to get for cherries which makes the process harder than it needs to be. I have some interest in apples as well.

Quite a few University breeding programs have released apples that have little value for large scale commercial plantings but have value for backyard orchards and PYO orchards. Honeycrisp fit in this category initially since it is hard to grow, ship and store. That changed when growers saw strong market demand for Honeycrisp. Another example is Pixie Crunch which is too small to be viable for large scale orchards.

I agree with Solko you need to have a plan to test what you breed in different climates and against different cultivars. It’s unlikely as a home breeder you will be able to do this thru the university sponsored programs or the programs that a commercial breeder has in place. You may be able to distribute scionwood to people spread over United States that could do informal evaluations. But I don’t think this is going to be a route to being a top 50 commercially planted apple.

From the technical side the parents make a big difference. Larger numbers of seedlings helps a lot. Having good goals helps too. I think breeding an improved Honeycrisp or an improved red flesh apple is probably a waste of time. Large scale commercial breeders are working on this and they plant thousands of seedlings. For small scale breeders I would try to focus on goals that the large breeders ignore. A better apple for the South, improved russets, apples that actually have resistance to insects, these are better goals for a backyard breeder for apples.

For more obscure plants, I think you have less competition. A professional plant breeder was talking and said for lilium there are about a dozen serious, committed breeders that’s it. I would guess there are a hundred that do crosses on a regular basis like me but that still is a very small number. So if you want more chances of making an impact you might breed Cornelian Cherries or Serviceberries or Duke cherries (tart/sweet hybrids). Little work is being done on them and the chances of your creation being offered by a nursery is much higher.

As far as heirlooms I think demand for them has increased for a couple of reasons. One is with the internet you can find more information about them and find nurseries that supply them easier than you could in the pre-internet age. Second, in the quest for cheap mass production and requirements for toughness in shipping, and long storage, the importance of flavor and texture was lost in shuffle. The heirlooms didn’t need to met these requirements but they had to taste good which is why people still plant them.

1 Like
#27

So that I’m clear - I have zero interest in breeding to create the Next Honeycrisp™. :slight_smile:

I’d be more interested in just keeping track of who’s working with what. And might be willing to swap varieties as they come up with interesting things.

I tend to go with heirlooms, oddballs, or varieties that are both.

I’m not quite into “chaos gardening” - where you just basically let things do what they will and whatever succeeds is what you have. But I’d like to eventually select things down to a useful population of fruits that do well in my microclimate and that I have a use and taste for. (For instance, I’m not super into sweet cherries. I far prefer the sours. Although the crosses might be interesting).

I’m also a geneticist by training, and into history as an inclination. I love the story behind the variety sometimes as much as the variety itself. Which might be part of why I’m often intrigued by varieties presented by Baker Creek - there are a fair few that were the simple result of one person or group of people consistently selecting for decades until what they had was just unique. The Tommy Apple Melon leaps to mind.

I do think it might be helpful for NoObs to hear about how others go about making their crosses, growing them out, and testing the progeny.

2 Likes
#28

I haven’t found the extension service terribly helpful. Possibly because I live in the fruit belt and the agents working over here are far more used to dealing with the commercial folks. And, as I say, it makes me a little sad because I’m a graduate of the College of Ag and Nat Resources. I used to work for the Dean’s office as a student ambassador. I even got one of the Ag Econ profs to sit for an interview (regarding the hard cider market) for my podcast last week. Although in return for this, I have been roped into speaking to his class in the Fall. Of late, the entire ag program has gotten de-prioritzed. Likely because of the push to try to rival UofM in the human medical sector. But that’s another topic.

I have followed along with some of your adventures. Since we’re in similar conditions, I find a lot of your posts particularly helpful. And your breeding or propagating projects of particular interest.

1 Like