How to search for information about fruit online (fix broken links, read scientific papers. + useful links)

General Fruit Growing
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These tools and websites are not things I developed or thought of. Just things I use almost daily. And wish I’d known about years ago.

I hope you find them as useful as I do.

This is a somewhat longer post. so i will separate it by tool/category. Feel free to skip those you’re familiar with or those that do not sound interesting.

Bunch of useful links
Mainly of variety databases.

  • 700+ cherry varieties and their pollination S allele.
  • 600 apples genetically tested to be diploid or triploid.
  • Some information on historical apples and watercolor drawings of them and their flowers. Etc

The Obvious
CTRL+F or Command+F (for mac users) (keyboard shortcut)

The time machine

  • waybackmachine -Internet archive. To fix website-links that now longer work.

The scientific

  • Sci-Hub -and Libgen to easily find and read all scientific articles.

Shining a light on the workings of… shadow?

  • Shadowcalculator -A tool that lets you draw shapes on google maps. And shows you how those objects shadows will look at specific times and days of the year. Helps you figure out if your tree’s wil shade each other at different planting heights/distances/orientation.

Universal translator, Translating complete websites and documents.
Just in case your not fluent in 108 languages

How to search better on google
search operators

Bunch of useful links

Some excellent youtube grafting video playlists

The Obvious
CTRL+F or Command+F (for mac users)
95% of you will already know about this. But I included it for those 5% of you who’s life will change for the better now.

Basically press the CTRL key and while keeping CTRL pressed. Hit F key.
Now a search box will usually appear. Here you type your search word(s). See this screenshot of wikipedia apple page.

GF%20forum%20ctrl%20F
GF%20forum%20ctrl%20F1639×752 433 KB

This usually works in almost all programs, documents or websites. (Although it works a little different on this forum than most websites)
It is especially useful if you have a large list/website/document where you’re only looking for 1 piece of information. (like a pollinator for a specific fruit variety you have. Or the S allele of a certain cherry variety in a list of 734 cherry varieties and their S allele)

The time machine

  • waybackmachine -
    Internet archive. To fix website-links that now longer work.
    Everything used to be better right?! That link used to work! Well now it can again :slight_smile:

Let’s look at this excellent topic about rootstocks and graft compatibility on this forum
*Rootstock Graft Compatibility
If you click the link for reference source 18,

However if you copy the “broken” link into the search window of the “waybackmachine” like shown on the screenshots.

GF%20forum%20waybackmachine%201
GF%20forum%20waybackmachine%2011443×443 34.9 KB

GF%20waybackmachine%202
GF%20waybackmachine%2021455×793 52 KB

You get the following.

Unfortunately they don’t have everything archived. So it usually works 80% of the time. And some-times you have to try a few different date’s.

It is also a free non profit library. Where you can read books like

The scientific
Sci-Hub and Libgen

It usually works best with the article title or DOI number.
If you get a loading or 404 error, usually a reload will fix it.

Shining a light on the workings of… shadow?

Universal translator, Translating complete websites and documents.

How to search better on google
search operators
If you search for an apple variety on google, you usually get a ton of results that have nothing to do with the fruit apple.
For example: the apple variety Elektra (“google search Elektra apple”). Will give me pages and pages of iphones, macs, apps, electronics and other things i’m not interested in.

However searching for “Elektra apple -apple.com -mac -ios -iphone” will give me way better results.

This also works on sites like ebay. Searching for “grafting” yields you all kinds of dental beekeeping and eyelash products. If you search for “grafting -eye -queen -bee -bone -dental” you already get way better results.

Besides excluding things from your searches (by typing a - before the word you want to exclude) there are other commands:

  • OR AND “exact combination of these words in parenthesis”
    site:only-search-on-this-website.com

so searching for

I hope this was useful. If you’ve got any tips or anything to add or questions? let me know :slight_smile:

Feel free to edit this. Spelling and layout are just not my strong suit. So feel free to change whatever you want, if you think it improves the readability or useability.

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Thank you. I do use google translate daily!

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I use Google Translate almost daily, too. Italian genealogy, sometimes older is better in Corsican. I’ve got it close but not quite, and crossing into Brazil/Portuguese, I am lost.

@oscar Thanks for all the links,some of those for scientific articles I did not know about.

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This is really useful, detailed information. It needs to be easy to access because it’s too much to take in all at once!

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Thank you. I’m one of the 5% that needed the “Ctrl F” command. I forgot how to do it and never figured it out, several-years ago. I didn’t see https://outline.com/ but noticed you had something else.

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Thank you! Some of these I was not familiar with, look useful! Shadow calculator will definitely be handy!

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Thanks for the kind reply’s.

I myself find that google translate plugin especially usefull. You select your favorite language once. And after that a right click anywhere on any website gives you the 1 click option to translate it in real time.
GF%20forum%20google%20translate%20plugin

@franc1969
Sci-hub opens up a whole new world if your intrested in scientific articles. we used it at uni already. Because it had accses to more articles and was more user friendly than the normal university library.

@marknmt Thanks for the kind words :slight_smile:
Would it have been better if i made seperate topics for each subject? Or is it usfull to have it all in 1 place? But just a bit overwhelming (i completly understand, if slowly gotten used to all these things 1 by 1. Can imagine trying em out all the the same time, Won’t work.

@Barkslip Glad the CTRL F helped you. I woulden’t want to go without!
I tried and looked at that outline link. I’m having a hard time figuring out what it does?
For what do you use it? Could you explain a little about it?

@elizard i also really like that tool. However i wish there where a 3foot/1meter grid or somthing to make it more easily to plan out distances. Now im reliant on using landmarks or putting a ruler on my screen to measure the shadow lengt and divide that by the noted lenght, to get the scale.
It is quite fun to play around with. And just changing the time of day and seeing the shadows move. And than changing time of year. Gives you a real “feeling” for how things work :slight_smile:

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I’m such a dweeb when it comes to using my computer that it’s probably better to not take my thoughts too seriously. You’ve already done a lot gathering and presenting that information, and I don’t mind doing some of the work myself!

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From what I can tell, Sci-Hub and Library Genesis where set up to bypass copyright laws similar to Pirate Bay. They have lost various lawsuits and have had to change domain names at times after being blocked by several nations for illegal activities. They were blocked on Twitter for “counterfeit content”. They gain access to scientific papers using fraudulent credentials.
With all their legal problems the sites are still popular since copyright laws are ignored for various reasons.

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Hi, outline is for when a website asks that you join (such as a newspaper) to view their content. Instead you put their web address into outline.com and now you can read it. Thank you, Oscar.

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@danzeb
I think you might have oversimplified it a bit in your description. And you are drawing parallels to for example pirate bay. While there are a lot of really significant differences. From my experience most (if not all) of the scientific communities roughly sees it as bypassing a monopoly/parasite. While the publishers of course sees it as lost revenue, or a weaker monopoly position.

The truth will probably lay somewhere in between.

I know that a lot of scientists upload their own articles to sci-hub. I have not heard of artists posting their own paid content (music/films) to the pirate bay. So there already is one of the many significant differences.
There are many more.

Sci-hub is also really user friendly. And a significant portion of the content you can access via that website is open access. So certainly not all content is illegal. However if you search for it, you can find illegal content with it.
A lot depends on how you use it. You can use it to do something illegal. You can also use it to do a lot of legal things.
You could use your grafting knife to stab/cut a person, you could also use it to graft a fruit tree.

Same for youtube. It is perfectly legal to listen to music from multiple artists on youtube. However you can also easily download those songs. And that is illegal.

However i will admit it is easier to use sci-hub for illegal acts than it is youtube.

Sending scions to friends via the post in most cases is perfectly legal. However, sending them to some countries is not. Or sending citrus to california might not be legal.

However i will note that there certainly is some controversy around sci-hub. And i have put effort in. Making sure all links and articles i posted, are perfectly legal to download with sci-hub.

I also posted several sources that go deeper into the complicated things about sci-hub. I especially find the video of the doctor talking about it. Very complete and measured/objective. Have you watched that one? it is in my Original post, the 3e video.

For a while i have been using sci-hub.se which is a swedish (from the country of sweden) domain. Although i think in the past it has changed yea.

In the end i think you will have to make your own decision to use it or not. And if you use it, how you use it. It is good to think about though, and that is why i recommend to read/watch the many things i have linked about sci-hub

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Who owns knowledge?

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@Barkslip
Thanks you for the explenation Barkslip.
That sounds really usfull. Although also posible illigal

Since sci-hub might already be a bit to controversial. I think i won’t add it to the origional post. I hope that is oky. Or would you prefure id add it to the first post?

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It’s a simple fact that they have lost multiple lawsuits for copyright and trademark infringement with fines of millions of dollars and injunctions. They get documents from behind paywalls fraudulently in some or all cases based on lawsuits. The website was blocked multiple times in several countries forcing them to setup new domain names. I takes money to run these websites. If they don’t advertise they get donations. I wonder how profitable it is? I’m just stating some facts. I’m not telling anyone what to do. As I said, they are popular so their illegal activity has been ignored for various reason. Some of those reasons you describe.

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Someone how has knowledge can keep it to themselves, give it away for free or get paid to share it. I’m not a big fan of current copyright and patent laws… I do realize that there is a cost to disseminating information and a cost of turning knowledge into products. If there wasn’t some financial reward for researching and publishing research there would be a lot less of it.

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Did you watch the youtube video? (the 3e one)
He goes into the history. It used to be free. And now a lot of it is open access (free) and it seems to lead to more and better research.

I also want to note: researchers and peer reviewers don’t get paid by the publishers. In most cases they get paid by taxpayers (paid for the research, writing/editing/formatting their article they do for free), the publishers get their work for free, and then ask money for it.

Already some governments around the world have demanded that all publicly funded research be open access (free).
So it is no longer possible for publishers to claim ownership or forbid researchers sharing their knowledge. I see this as a major step forward. A lot of this open access research is perfectly legally accessable via sci-hub.se

The person here who has the knowledge is the researcher. in most cases paid for by “us” (citizens/taxpayers). The researcher is already giving away the knowledge for free. Peer review, repeatability and access are all really inportant in the scientific method.

I was not expecting this to be so controversial. My apologies. In the end this is a forum about fruit growing. So i will try to get less off topic

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I think this is a wonderful post and is very valid and helpful for furthering our research on whatever fruit related topics we may come across. I just recently rediscovered the way back machine and used it to access some information that was no longer available on permies.com which I believe ended up leading me to this forum in the end.

Also to Richards and danzebs discussions on knowledge, the patent process has surely motivated people like Neal Peterson to further research on pawpaws and likely provided a living to many fruit breeders throughout the years. Sure those royalty fees are an additional tax, but everyone who now has access to that fruit has a better piece of fruit. And patents all have a shelf life, which motivates the holder to monetize it while they can, and I don’t blame anyone for doing so. Someone spent a lot of time and effort developing cosmic crisp apples and they should be rewarded for it.

The point on scientific research being paid for by “us” is also extremely valid, and I would also argue it should be illegal to hold that information from the public if we paid for it.

Edit: Thanks to Oscar for spending the time to put this together!

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Excellent resources. Another one, the All-Russian Research Institute of Fruit Crops Breeding page, may be found at vniispk.ru . It has descriptions of hundreds of cultivars developed in Russia and is invaluable for researching cold hardy material. Unless you know Russian, you’ll need to use Google Translate. Once you find something interesting, you can research it by looking at the original text and copying the name in the Cyrillic alphabet; then plug that into google search and translate those pages. It opens up a whole new world!

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