Adams County Nursery seems to be selling a new variety- RubyRush. It is listed as a cross between GoldRush and Enterprise. The apple is described as "juicy and aromatic with a desirable crisp texture "and is meant to have resistance or tolerance to scab, CAR and fire blight. They have a youtube video that puts its harvest window in late Sept to early Oct and says it can keep some months in cold storage. It is set to be available in 2022. Other than this l have found nothing on the web, not even a patent. Anyone have any info on this one? Or do I have to break lock down and go stalking my local Rutgers plant biologists? (Haha). Much obliged. - Pete
I say hunt em down and make em work
Sounds like a good Apple if it inherits goldrush in eating and enterprise in resistance
Sounds interesting…but maybe you should use an existing Gold Rush or Enterprise, and get some pollen and pretend you’re a bee…and do the deed. And see if you can grow out some seedlings of the two that would equal “RubyRush”? If you have the space and time for that sort of endeavor. Graft the little seedlings to B9 or G41 and you’d get results in 3 years.
The same to parents can produce a nearly infinite array of possible offspring.
I assume if this is the output of a breeding program they planted hundreds of trees and selected what they thought was the best only after some testing.
Thanks. I don’t know how much interest or time or space you have…so I was just playing the other viewpoint in the discussion.
But, yes, like a family of 17 kids (I had a date with a gal in such a family 40 years ago), they all look different, but usually you see enough features that you can guess they are “related” somehow.
Ditto with apples. If they planted 1000 seeds and got “RubyRush”, you might plant 1000 seeds and get one that actually is better! (And 900 to 1000 that aren’t!)
@z0r That was a cool summary of decades of all the PRI breeding work. They seem to have gotten a lot of mileage out of the malus floribunda genetics. I had not realized how many cultivars came from the program. @BlueBerry An apple breeding project sounds fun I just need more square footage of dirt, hours in the day, and if the time scale of the PRI efforts is any indication, some fewer years to my age.(hehe). It does however make me wonder if they could use and unpaid, and largely unskilled intern…
Peaceful Heritage Nursery Ky now also sells RubyRush trees but not scions.
Does PRI prohibit selling scions to the public from new releases?
Would like a stick or two- the Enterprise genes might make it resist Marssonina Leaf Blotch that hammered my Goldrush this year.
nj 150 (the apple variety sold under the marketing brand “rubyrush”) is patented in the us until 2040 - USPP33546P2 - Apple tree named NJ150 - Google Patents
btw I think it’s a rutgers-only variety not PRI but I can’t find release info from the breeder so I’m going on the name being “NJ…” instead of “co-op…”
public breeding programs these days receive less and less public funding than they used to so they almost always patent their releases and partner with industry to sell them with royalties going to support the public breeding program. I don’t know what their industry agreement is but there’s typically no way to get scions. from the perspective of rutgers they wouldn’t care as long as you could pay the $1-2. from the perspective of retail nurseries like ACN they’d lose a lot more than $1-2 by selling a scion instead of a tree so they’ll never do a scion program until the patent expires.
Thanks much for the heads up…
Thanks. So we wait. Enterprise x Goldrush sounds to me like it might produce some fabulous results. Bulletproof x Great Taste & Texture.
Yeah. I guess that is exactly right. "and so we wait… " There is not a lot of really yummy and bulletproof out there. Let’s see how this one does.
Have you taken a look at any of Skillcult’s videos on YouTube? He’s been breeding apples for a bit, now selling scions of some of his first crosses.
And as he says, your odds of getting a good apple are better than most sources of information make it sound. Try it, just on one tree if time is limited.
Anyone been apple to taste one of these yet?
I tasted the only one that ripened on my 2nd year tree this year. It was very sweet and aromatic. Crisp but denser than honeycrisp. Juicy. It seemed to be more resistant to rot and the new strain of fireblight going around than my other apples including goldrush, freedom, liberty, and arkansas black.
From what they describe of ripening in Sept to early Oct, does that mean its significantly earlier than Goldrush?
edit: okay, I see elsewhere it described as ripening in peak season. So yes, earlier than Goldrush.
Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery offers RubyRush on standard root-stock.
Direct link: RubyRush™ Apple Tree For Sale - Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery
Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery is my favored source for wildlife fruit trees
Site description: The RubyRush™ apple is a cross between two popular apple trees widely planted for wildlife Enterprise and Goldrush apple. This apple tree has excellent resistance to apple scab, FireBlight, and Cedar Apple rust in a no-spray situation. The fruit is crisp and great for fresh eating on the way to the stand or feeding wildlife as this fruit ripens and begins falling in October and continues into November here in Pennsylvania. RubyRush™ is vigorous and maybe too productive as it can go into bi-annual bearing if not thinned. However, I will take a disease-free apple falling at the right time (Oct/Nov) on my properties and as many as possible. RubyRush™ is suitable for plant hardiness zones 4b-7.
We have 25 Ruby Rush in our organic orchard in SW Wisconsin, planted in 2021. We liked them so well we are putting in another 120 this spring. Good flavor and texture, sweeter than enterprise. Great disease resistance, sells well at market. The tree seems to be a bit of a brushy grower. Earlier season that Enterprise and much earlier that Gold Rush - we picked Ruby Rush about October 5th, a couple weeks before Enterprise. I recommend it.