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.”
