Update on my apple breeding project.
I started breeding apples about 14 years ago. I am doing it on a very small scale compared to any commercial breeding project. I have fruited first generation crosses only to this point. Any year now, I’ll get fruit from some second gen crosses. I hope to speed that up a bit in the future with better care and some strategy, but it is a slow game. Given that I am 58 this year, I only have so many apple generations left to go before the game is over. I’ll just tell a little about what I’ve learned and some results.
To my surprise, I’ve actually named and released 23 varieties, Cherub, Tomboy Crab, Hella Kitty, Vanilla Pink, Pink Lemonade, Black Strawberry, Sugarwood, Hard Candy Cider, Jellybean Cider, Integrity, Twang, Dutch Master, January Russet, Cherry Crush, Black and Red, Clarion, Amberwine, Appleoosa, Red Winter Pie, Musketeer, Pinker Lady, BITE ME!, and Pomegranate Crab. You can read about each of them here. APPLE BREEDING — SkillCult I want to set up pages for each variety eventually so that people can leave feedback as they are grown different places.
My early focus was on improving and diversifying red fleshed apples. Now I’m into more categories that I think have amazing promise. Some categories I’m pursuing are russets, savory apples, savory russets!, red flesh, strong and/or unique flavors (especially musky, fruit candy, cherry and strawberry), dessert crabs, apples that ripen and hang on the tree into winter and hopefully spring and disease resistance in any of those. The most surprising traits I’ve had come out are the unmistakeable fake strawberry flavor of Black Strawberry and the musky flavor in Musketeer, which I’ve now noticed in other apples, I think all rubaiyat crosses.
What I’ve learned…
Apple breeding is easy, it just takes a long time. You don’t need to know much. Just crossing very good apples together, or even one good apple, with one that has some unique traits, can yield good results. Certainly, the more primitive the parents, the less likely you are to get good quality dessert apples. I used Grenadine for all my early crosses. In spite of its shortcomings I still had pretty good results. The very crabby Maypole, even when crossed with great apples like Wickson, Chestnut Crab and Pink Parfait has thrown mostly crabby stuff and nothing very high quality in terms of all dessert qualities coming together well. As a rough rule, according to my experience and the experience of others doing this on a small scale, when using good parents, expect about 10% to 15% good enough that you might want to keep and graft them, about that many bad ones to definitely cut down (unless you are a cider maker perhaps) and the majority in between okay to eat or juice, but not distinguishing themselves enough to get excited about. My recommendation is to make inspired crosses and follow your instinct. It it is your nature to geek out, then go for the science, but be careful about building a very limiting box to operate in. If I had listened to all the people that told me triploids are a dead end in breeding, I wouldn’t be growing out multiple crosses made with triploid apples. I even put triploid pollen on triploids this year just to see what will happen! The only triploid I’ve had issues with is Suntan. but i was told it was actually made in some kind of lab process.
Start with good parents. That does not always mean the best dessert quality, it could be for some other trait. Just make crosses for a reason most of the time. In general, breeding is a game of building on refinements and selections. I started with Grenadine, but can’t imagine using it again when I can use it’s improved offspring like Vanilla Pink, Black Strawberry, Appleoosa etc.especially with red fleshed apples, we are trying to leave behind the worst traits, so leave them. I still use Rubaiyat, but that will eventually come to an end as well. If I did this over, I would collect even more apples and get pollen from people to make early crosses of stuff that was not fruiting for me yet. Trialing as much as possible means breeding with stuff that is known to do well in your area, which is probably a pretty big deal. Diagonal cordons on very dwarfing stocks like M9 and bud9 (video here https://youtu.be/M23VxZtCp_o?si=8eTGsfLxc2IC3k8T) and frame working onto already fruiting trees are good ways to get stuff that you collect fruiting quickly for assessment and breeding. The jury is still out on whether they actually speed up fruiting of new apple seedlings. I have not seen seedlings fruit faster when put onto established fruiting trees so far.
Patience. You either learn it or suffer not learning it lol.
Characteristics of the parents are almost always seen in offspring. Usually you can pick out multiple characteristics from one or both parents. Some traits are more persistent. The red fleshed trait passes well. I’d say more than half the time though I have not actually kept track. Many of those will be just very lightly colored, or even without color in some years and conditions. I have not noticed a synergy between two red fleshed apples from the same line. For instance, Rubaiyat x Pink Parfait are both descended from Surprise and crossed together don’t seem to produce a higher number of very red fleshed apples that crossing rubaiyat with anything else does. That is just a casual observation. I still think there may be a synergy between very dark skinned apples and red fleshed apples that might cause more dark red fleshed apples, but not sure of that yet. I do think crossing red fleshed apples with apples like Arkansa Black, Black Oxford, Black Winesap etc. is very promising.
Of the red flesh lines, the most promising for getting high quality fruit quickly seems to me to be the Etter line coming originally from Surprise. The other main genetic line seems to be a little more primitive, tending to be thin tasting. I now have apples like Pinker Lady that seem to have none of the common problems of red fleshed apples and I’m only in the first generation. The columnar trait using maypole was passed 50% exactly. All were Maypole as the seed parent, except one that had Maypole as the pollen parent. Scab resistance is passed sometimes and sometimes not. I don’t have numbers and would need more time and data to be at all specific about that.
There is more potential yet to be discovered. New flavors and other traits will pop up and more different apples are used in breeding. Pursuing species crabs is a long game, but it should be done just to see what kind of traits are uncovered.
I’ve changed how I do things quite a bit over the years. I wrote a 5 part blog series on what I would do if I were starting now and how I’ve changed some things like pollination and growing out seeds. Look at those for more details on that stuff.
Part 2: What I Would Do Now In Apple Breeding, Part 2, Pollination — SkillCult
Part 3: What I Would Do Now In Apple Breeding, Part 3, Germination — SkillCult
Part 4: What I Would Do Now In Apple Breeding, Part 4, Growing Out Trees — SkillCult
Part 5: What I Would Do Now In Apple Breeding, Part 5, Assessing Fruit — SkillCult
All the varieties I’ve released so far are in the public domain and I encourage anyone to use them in breeding. I’ve had multiple nurseries and individuals approach me about growing them and offering back a voluntarily collected royalty to support my work. The only collaboration that is up and running is Cummin’s Nursery who are growing 8 of the varieties. Cummins Nursery - Fruit Trees, Scions, and Rootstocks for Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums, Peaches, and Nectarines. If that goes well, they will probably add more varieties. I’m sure more will be available as trees in the future from them and other sources, as well as scion wood. Currently I sell scion wood in the winter for a short time and I auction off seedlings that are in short supply, like newer releases. Auctions on Figbid actually end this evening https://figbid.com/Browse?FullTextQuery=skillcult Scions that I have more of are put into the my webstore STORE — SkillCult If it is not on auction, it will be in the store. The store closes after the auctions end for about 5 days to give early access to my supporters on Patreon, then it is opened to the public. If you go to the store and it is password protected that is why. It should be open to the public by the 23rd or 24th at the latest. The best ways to find out when seeds, pollen and scions are available each year in order are, joining patreon www.patreon.com/skillcult, subbing to my blog Blog — SkillCult and finally instagram as a distant third.
Besides sending out scions for use in breeding, I have also sent out a lot of pollen and seed. As soon as I get anything new that I’m breeding with, I make pollen and seeds available. I must have sent out tens of thousands of seeds by now. Many are cross pollinated, but also select open pollinated seeds. Given the numbers, that is quite a legacy of this project. A lot of amazing apples will come from all that seed and pollen. The real legacy though is all the people that have been inspired by this project to start breeding apples and other plants. Without them, it is all a dead end. This is a living process, not an archive. It is my hope that I can set up a place that will outlive me by long enough that all my breeding work doesn’t get dropped and neglected or bulldozed right away as it usually does when plant breeders die. At least I’m getting the stuff out there as it happens. My prime orientation has always been toward the altruistic aspect of plant breeding. If not, these interesting genetics and the apple breeding bug would not have spread like they have. So, hopefully that ethos will echo on as well. All in all the project has exceeded any expectations and if I stopped tomorrow, I’d still consider it a success. I hope to get more generations in yet. I’m saving money and trying to figure out how to move to a permanent place that is of the quality of land I think I’m worthy of working with to do this and many other projects and activities. Eventually that should be a non-profit of some kind.
For now, I plan to keep making scion wood of my varieties and other interesting ones available along with seed and pollen for the forseable future. I’d love to hear what others are working on in apple breeding or just growing out seeds at any scale. There is so much potential and so many directions to go and problems to solve. The success of this project has been made possible by the participation of other people watching, sharing, donating individually or joining patreon, participating in breeding, sending me cool genetics etc. Thank you all so much for helping make this happen <3
(likes). It is SO thoroughly thought out and well written. I really appreciate the time you took to post this info here! 