I had not asked; but I suspect they must have gotten some form of genetic tests back. Though I do not entirely believe them though. Jim Kell Thinskin/Fort’s Prize is distinctly different then “Milam” which they now refer you to.
Milam is smallish/medium and thicker skinned then Fort’s Prize which is a large apple. Now maybe they are different seedlings of the same parents. They also removed a listing for “Improved Milam” I saw.
There are others to. Deacon Jones is referred to as” July go no further”. I have not looked at every page though.
If my memory serves me correctly, WSU has two Milams listed on the accessory file. The link is down again this morning.
While the $50 test may be an adequate test for straightforward identification, it probably isn’t the best choice for detective work. Maybe the $150 tests would be adequate.
While riding through the orchard last Fall, Jason made some unguarded remarks.
He said the Rebel or Red Rebel testing results came back as the same apple as Kinnairds Choice. I cannot remember which of the Rebels he mentioned. This may be a labelling issue
The Golden Harvest results came back as a Golden Delicious. Could this be a sport of the Golden D? It was a damn good apple and was right of there with the Spitz.
Some of the stories being told about apples by private curators are not exactly accurate. My wife’s grandfather grew a Jon apple. There is a Winter Jon, Sour Jon, Jon apple described at Horne Creek. I believe the one Maurice Marshal was hunting was the one type grown by my wife’s family and it was not near extinction as the story goes. Oddly enough, the one my wife’s grandfather grew does not fit any of the descriptions from Big Horse Creek or Horne Creek and was used exclusively for drying and dried apple pies.
I’m less concerned about labels than I am about quality. I once grew a Granny Mac apple and it is was a miserable POS that should go extinct. No apple should taste this awful. It was a bad as saltless grits.
I can also say their Royal Limbertwig Pic is not a RLT and the White LT is also not a White LT.
Jason once mentioned he thought the Brushy and OFLT were the same. They are clearly not. They don’t cook up the same at all. The OFLT has foliage issues. Brushy does not. Interesting sidenote not heard. Parkers is probably the oldest commercial orchard in the Brushy Mts in NC. They sell the Limbertwig apple which is synonymous with the OFLT. There is a pic of the original tree taken in 1900 at the office. Other orchards such as Deals sells the Brushy Mt. Limbertwig.
I can also say the Blue Ridge King is not a Hoover. The BRK I grew ripened mid August. Extremely heat and drought tolerant even on M7. Prone to fire blight. Quite tart with near zero sweetness. Large flattish apple.
I concur. Black LT is a world away in flavor from Winesap. Also Black LT origin is in 1844 mid-Tennessee. Could it be a New Jersey apple? I do not care for Black LT myself. But it sure has big fans in Georgia.
What worries me are they scrubbing these trees? Because from a preservation standpoint the genetic tests do not allow for seedlings or sport mutations. I want the Provence. Wanting the honest Georgia Rabun County Fort’s Prize that won best apple in the Nation honors is what you Preserve IMO.
Oh no they did not. Red Limbertwig replaces American and Old Fashioned Limbertwig??? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Quite distinct differences. Totally different attributes…..grrr.
I wonder how much of the DNA they actually sequence? Can’t be the whole thing. If they sequence random fractions, then I think that you would have to validate the method with a set of fully sequenced varieties, and even with that you would not have 100% certainty that two samples are the same. But I am not an expert in genetic testing, just some questions I would have.
I agree, I just went over the list and a lot of the apples they are claiming to be the same are totally different. Pretty amazing. Very misleading, like you said hopefully they don’t remove trees thinking they are duplicates. Obviously apple DNA testing isn’t as accurate as we had all hoped.
Mislabeling is certainly an issue. This is a huge problem since they’re prolific contributors to WSU. If WSU is getting bad data, the whole system will be defective. WSU or any other tester should not be blamed for this debacle.
From what I read, they are only sequencing a set of marker regions for genetic fingerprinting. If there are differences on the genome outside of these regions, then you are not going to pick them up (unless you choose to do a full genome sequencing). Also, some bud sports can be due to epigenetic changes, that can be at least partially be propagated from cuttings, in these cases the genome is the same, but you have different epigenetic modifications (for example methylation), that leads to differences in gene expression, which can then lead to differences in fruit color for example.
Pointing that out let to one semi-famous grower accusing me of following old dogma and not having any grasp of technology. Gave me quite a giggle being an electronic engineer since the 1980’s. When a vast advance in electronic technology came to being.
There are a lot of complexities here. I do not see instant dismissal of proven varieties as praiseworthy or laudable.
I saw that, didn’t realize that was you. She really didn’t like what you had to say. Unfortunately she’s wrong. Regardless what the process says these are all very different apples. I had a feeling pointing it out would ruffle some feathers.
Science is a process, and having an open and inquisitive mind is part of it. A key tenet of science is that all hypotheses are provisional, sooner or later to be modified or outright discarded.