Research the events yourself.
It happened.
New York times said Ukraine was full of NAZIs in 2018 now they say the opposite.
CNN and White House said Covid vaccines stop transmission, now everyone says the opposite.
Fox news said Biden won, Tucker Carlson said the opposite.
Can you name a “reliable” news organization?
Enough politics, it is not allowed here. Thanks.
Knowing that apples don’t breed true to seed makes it questionable as to why you would even bother.
Patented fruit trees take many thousands of tries and often a decade or more to come up with a viable commercial product at least.
I wouldn’t even think of trying to grow a seedling to maturity for any fruit that doesn’t breed true as to me it would likely not yield an enjoyable fruit anyway.
At least that is what I’ve read about how it works.
Of course I’m never going to sell anything I grow so I’m not upsetting the apple cart (yes, pun intended) anyway.
I admit to finding little enticement to breed with Club apples or highly touted cvs. still under patent. If it ever came up (& I have yet to try apple breeding) I might dodge & weave with the simple approach: “Golden Delicious OP” as in “open pollinated”. Many older cultivars bred at research stations across the globe were described in just that way.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would breed with Honeycrisp (no longer under patent), for instance, when Duchess of Oldenburg is listed on both the pollen and seed parent lines. You want that breaking flesh? Do one better than had U. of MN by including D/O in your breeding line up and come up with a tastier apple & thrifty tree.
If I were to breed apples, I would want some of the strengths of, say, GoldRush (marvelous easy care tree in my neck of the woods) and the size & high flavor of Spokane Beauty. SB is a tip bearer only, if I understand the literature correctly, but that can be sorted among the resultant seedlings.
For an early season apple, I would try crossing Lamb Abbey and Maiden Blush, and both of these to Twenty Ounce. Maybe Otterson for its red flesh and all three of the above. Now that would be a project worth pursuing!
If I had land and more years to live I’d play with cross pollination some. I mean part of what I enjoy about fishing is never knowing what the next cast might bring.
I’d perhaps name my new wonderful apple variety OP-OP-OP-OP Open Pollinated Style and hire Psy for the advertising.
Oooooohhhh Sexy Apple… OP OP OP OP, Open Pollinated Style…
I’d need a LOT of land for it to be worth it to me to play with breeding apples. But i think it would be fun. Anecdotally, a decent fraction of random seedlings are nice to eat, it’s just that it’s incredibly rare for one to hit all the marks that a commercial apple needs to hit. And even rarer to get one that’s enough better than what’s already available to be worth marketing it.
Yeah after my post I thought of how I worded it. I. Certainly there should be some edible fruit…and as you state, what breeders look for is quite a ways beyond what backyard gardeners would perhaps be happy with.
It remains, however, pretty daunting when you hear of the numbers of tries folks like Zaiger go through for the end result. With quoted numbers easily in the thousands if not over 10,000 tries for one marketable new variety…
You could not possibly be more wrong.
You plant more apple seeds to get more apple trees with good but different apples.
It does NOT take thousands of tries to come up with a good apple seedling. It takes only a few tries if you use good parents.
Patenting is a commercial business decision that impacts marketing and sales of a tree. It is not equivalent to producing the best quality of any fruit.
You clearly have not heard of Steven Edholm, a member of this group, better known as Skillcult. He has produced many good seedling apples and is constantly reminding people that it is not hard to do so. Here’s one of his many videos.
Perhaps I’ve been exposed to a bit of marketing then from the folks with patented trees.
Still I don’t have the room to try so I’m stuck with what I can buy regardless of who produced it and how much work it took to do so.
I understand.
There are also a lot of people in academia who don’t actually grow trees but assume that producing good fruit trees must be very difficult. And they publish articles about how difficult it is when they have no qualifications to even discuss the subject.
I mentioned propaganda already didn’t I?
One good outcome in 10,000 is propaganda…and should be questioned.
Skillcult (who posts on this forum) can vouch that a couple hundred seedlings have resulted in 3 or 4 that he’s been able to sell scion from for good money.
Take out the “hundred” from a couple of hundred and it’s still a few too many for me to try.
If I had known when I was younger I would love gardening as much as I do now, I would have ended up with more land somewhere.
That being said, if your business is set up to test tens of thousands of cross-pollination a year (like Zaiger), it’s probably hard to stop and say this is good enough.
One reason why university breeding programs often have a low rate of individuals making the cut is that they are often breeding in wild material that has special traits like disease resistance, but also results in undesirable traits like reduced fruit size or off flavors/textures. The home breeder crossing a good apple to a good apple is much more likely to get a good apple as a result since they aren’t introducing the wild cards.
That said, some cultivars that do make the cut and get introduced would have been culls for many of us if WE had been the ones doing the selection since we have different tastes. I see this first hand in daylilies which I have been doing some casual breeding with. Many of the named varieties I’ve purchased would have been culls if I had been the one selecting them (I decided that after buying and growing them). Meanwhile, many of my seed grown daylilies have easily been as nice as the named varieties, but still get culled cause I have goals in mind that they don’t live up to.
Another note: Just because someone says they grew out 10,000 (or whatever other number) seedlings to find that one superior individual that was cultivar worthy doesn’t mean they dedicated space to growing out that many. Some of those 10,000 died off as seedlings, some were culled as seedlings due to abnormalities or selection traits which could be evaluated without seeing flower/fruit (like disease susceptibility or growth habit). By the time they get to the final stages of evaluation you can be sure the actual number of plants being evaluated is far lower than the number started with.
Even so, the odds of getting something enough better than what’s already on the market that it’s worth trying to create brand recognition, etc., is very small. I think the 1/10,000 is a reasonable number for “worth trying to market this new apple against everything already it there”. I think the odds of getting “tasty apple that you’d be happy to eat”, especially if you are breeding tasty apples, is closer to 1/2. Maybe higher, depending on how picky you are.
True. Also the university breeder or another large scale breeder has tougher selection criteria. You can’t be satisfied with a good eating apple if you have to select for a host of other factors like storage capability, shipping ability, disease resistance, etc.
Marketing is a totally different issue than fruit quality. That’s much more an economics issue than a fruit quality issue. To market any apple you need money, advertising and a hook. If your apple actually tastes good, that helps, but that’s never the major quality sought by commercial breeders. There are many superb apples that are not marketed commercially, apples that are far better than most modern cultivars.
Most of us are not growing seedlings in order to market them commercially. We are growing them so we can eat them and share them with other hobbyists.
The odds of producing a tree with fruit that is as good or better than the average apples being sold in the US today is probably at least 1 out of 5, or better if you pick good parents. Professional apple breeders have aready admitted that fruit from seedlings of Fuji/Honeycrisp hybrids produce better fruit than most apples sold today. Chinese apple breeders are crossing Honeycrisp with with their best apples and getting excellent seedlings. Whether any of these trees are marketed commercially is not the way to judge them. The quality of their apples is the way to judge them.
About half of hand pollinated apple seeds produce pleasant apples, so seedlings with controlled parents are worth it.
Also stone fruits generally grow almost true from seed, and many varieties of other fruits, like Antonovka, Wolf river, northern spy and other apples, so don’t say no too fast.
Yes, but if you watch his tasting videos he ranks most apples above standard supermarket apples. So you can grow a good home orchard from seed (at least with controlled parents), but one that’s MORE desirable than what’s currently on the market: that’s tough competition.
“If you can’t question something…it’s propaganda and not ‘science’ that is being promulgated.”
Blueberry’s comment should not be flagged. This is science.
This comment is obvious and noncontroversial.
Oh, science can be controversial, too. I’m remembering the ‘roundup-ready’ lawsuits
as their patented GMO corn contaminated open pollinated corn by seed-savers, and BAYER didn’t like that.
So, you just have to ignore some stuff, and continue with your conversation.
I suppose using pollen from an apple that hasn’t officially been made available to the public might be a more pertinent subject in this context.