Apparently there were some Malus-Pyrus crosses done in Germany in the 1980’s that were then back crossed with apple to produce fruit. There were research papers (in German) and some popular press articles (also in German) about these that came out around 2015.
Here’s a machine translation of the NTV article if (like me) you are limited in your German comprehension: Does the apple-pear hybrid work?. It sounds like an interesting direction of research. Does anyone have updates or more info on this? Have any of you possibly managed to taste one of the crosses?
I’m aware of interspecific hybrids. @39thparallel has had an apple / pear he has been testing for years. He may have others. He gave me some fruit which were very good. I’m not aware of the specifics of this German research or even as much as you posted. A search yields the groups interest in interspecific hybrids. The apple -pear came from the Richard Fahey collection originally
Zwintscher’s hybrid, I wrote to the published researchers when they first announced the sterile f1 had finally given some seeds for a fertile second generation. Also asked the retired researcher who had total access to the original grafted plant. Looking for a scion to tryout here. No response, no information, etc. I asked Joseph Postman (G.R.I.N.) about any so-called apple x pear hybrids available at scion exchanges/for sale. he said NONE are actual hybrids until DNA proven genetically.
If you want to find out more as i said in the other thread Richard is totally off the grid so contacting him can be tricky. “The apple pear interspecific hybrid if thats what it is may have originally came from Richard Fahey who can only be contacted via mail. It may have originally been from ars/grin. To contact Richard send a SASE for his scions list. He might respond to questions if you send a sase. The address is Singing Tree Acres Rd 2, Oxford, NY 13830. Richard is in his 70’s+ so he does not use things such as email or internet.”
Resurrecting this thread to continue discussion of pear/apple hybrids.
Creating New Apple Varieties by Cross-Breeding with Pear Genes has information on breeding work done in Kyoto Japan. There is also some info on the net about a pear apple hybrid from New Zealand. When I dug deep into the NZ info, it looks like it was a false alarm. The fruit involved called a “Papple” is actually a hybrid of Asian and European pear varieties.
The German and Japanese info is correct for a true Malus X Pyrus hybrid. One of the linked Japanese documents details the genetic contribution of both parents in the hybrid.
Why am I interested in a pear/apply hybrid? I’m looking for a red flowered pear tree which does not seem to exist in nature. It should be possible to move the red flower trait from apple to pear if a bridge hybrid is available. It would take a lot of years to produce but should be feasible.
I vaguely remember some british researchers got malus and pyrus hybrids in the 1950’s. Nicknamed them papples, probably first time the name had been used. The plants were weak runts that failed to live.
I remember writing to Richard many decades ago when his address was The Christian Homesteading Movement, and he’d send you a list of scions available. Back in the day.
