Where are all the amateur apple breeders?

[boundtothesoil]

Given that it's blossom time, is anyone doing any variety crossing with apples, plums or pears?

I've been searching the web for amateur apple breeders in the UK and can't find anything other than the diversity website and references to the late Hugh Ermen. It used to be a popular pastime in the Victorian and Edwardian era. There doesn't seem to be much (any?) interest now. Maybe I'm wrong and there is a thriving group/forum exchanging tips and ideas. I'm on my fourth year of crossing and have become totally addicted. What more can I say.

[zazen999]

Try googling Fruit Groups Uk/Wales...

Nottingham Organic Gardeners have Phil Corbett giving a workshop on fruit growing on June the 11th. Can't wait!

[StephenH]

It's a bit late for this year, though maybe I could try crossing 'Cottenhm Seedling' with 'Flower of Kent', my two late-flowerers, which still have some unopened buds on them. Might do that, actually - could be interesting. I was anyway thinking of growing some open-pollenated pips from my apple trees, just to see what came up, and maybe planting the resulting saplings in a few years' time, Johnny-Appleseed-like, in local uncultivated areas such as hedgerows and beside footpaths.

[FB.]

I plant a batch of pips most years and let nature take its course, but the growing conditions (low-fertility soil with low rainfall), pests (woolly aphids, slugs) or disease (mildew) usually kill them within a few years.
It seems as if the average modern-era apple seedling is not very robust. The only way to keep them going is to lovingly care for them for several years; defending them from other plant competition and from pests/diseases until the seedlings finally become strong enough to fend for themselves.

If the seedling trees are to fend for themselves in the wild or in a neglected situation, they need to be very vigorous rivalling the MM111 or M25 rootstock vigour.

Unfortunately, any variety which is triploid tends to produce very few viable seeds along with very little viable pollen - making triploids difficult to breed from and effectively ruling-out a large number of the tough-as-old-boots heritage varieties.

[orangepippin]

Ditto. However none of them have been any good, apart from one which has very attractive pink blossom, possibly the result of its father being a crab apple in a commercial orchard. For this reason it's probably better to use pips from apples taken from community orchards rather than supermarket varieties, as the pollen parent is more likely to be something interesting.

[Paulieb]

I plant a batch of pips most years and let nature take its course, but the growing conditions (low-fertility soil with low rainfall), pests (woolly aphids, slugs) or disease (mildew) usually kill them within a few years.
It seems as if the average modern-era apple seedling is not very robust. The only way to keep them going is to lovingly care for them for several years; defending them from other plant competition and from pests/diseases until the seedlings finally become strong enough to fend for themselves.

If the seedling trees are to fend for themselves in the wild or in a neglected situation, they need to be very vigorous rivalling the MM111 or M25 rootstock vigour.

Unfortunately, any variety which is triploid tends to produce very few viable seeds along with very little viable pollen - making triploids difficult to breed from and effectively ruling-out a large number of the tough-as-old-boots heritage varieties.

Ditto. However none of them have been any good, apart from one which has very attractive pink blossom, possibly the result of its father being a crab apple in a commercial orchard. For this reason it's probably better to use pips from apples taken from community orchards rather than supermarket varieties, as the pollen parent is more likely to be something interesting.

With regards to creating new varieties, would I be right in thinking that you could just sow any random apple pips and that would give you a new variety, as by default it most likely would have been cross pollinated.

Obviously, if you want to choose specific parents then that pollination would have to be done manually??

[DuncanM]

Apples have to be cross pollinated, so pips will give you a new variety.

I've planted ~30 or so pips from apples I get free at work (most likely from a supermarket), however I'm only doing it as I'm interested in the process but also any spare wood (which they will all be chopped down after 1 or 2 years) will be used for smoking on my BBQ

[FB.]

With regards to creating new varieties, would I be right in thinking that you could just sow any random apple pips and that would give you a new variety, as by default it most likely would have been cross pollinated.

Obviously, if you want to choose specific parents then that pollination would have to be done manually??

Yes, you can sow any pips but they need a period of about three months of time at about 4'C (separate the pips from the apple core and put the pips in a sealed container with a slightly damp piece of tissue in a fridge).
In the case of shop-bought apples there's a good chance that the "father" of the pips would be a crab apple, which could influence the fruit produced by the pip if it matured into a tree. Shop-bought apples will have been cold-stored may already have met the chill requirement for the pips - sometimes the apples are so old by the time we buy them off the shelf that the pips are dead.

Shop-bought apples tend to have poor disease resistance, and in my experience, in most cases the seedlings from common shop-bought apples don't usually survive more than a few months after germination before being killed by disease - usually mildew.

The best pips will be from "backyard growers" who have a collection of unusual varieties of trees. The likelihood of crab apple influence will be lower and the less common varieties as parents will offer a greater depth of disease resistance to their offspring.

[boundtothesoil]

With regards to creating new varieties, would I be right in thinking that you could just sow any random apple pips and that would give you a new variety, as by default it most likely would have been cross pollinated.

The pips arising from an apple that has been cross pollinated are, by definition, going to be genetically different from both of the parents. However, even if a variety is self-fertile, and has been pollinated by pollen from another flower of the same variety, the pips will be genetically 'different' from the parent because of the processes of 'crossing over' and 'independent assortment of chromosomes' occurring during meiosis in the formation of the haploid gametes (pollen and egg cell). Although in this case the tree that grows from the pip should not possess any genes not originally present in the parent, the two versions of each gene it carries (one from the male and one from the female gamete) will not always match up with the two versions in the parental apple. Hence, it should differ in some ways from the parent tree and is definitely not a clone.

[orangepippin]

Shop-bought apples tend to have poor disease resistance, and in my experience, in most cases the seedlings from common shop-bought apples don't usually survive more than a few months after germination before being killed by disease - usually mildew.

Whilst most supermarket varieties are not as resilient as traditional varieties, it does not necessarily follow their offspring will be weak, especially when you factor in the contribution from the probable parent - an orchard crab-apple pollinator. A more likely difficulty is that many supermarket varieties are adapted to warm climates and probably don't like the English weather.

I've found Red Delicious seedlings fairly successful - it's not my favourite variety, but you never know. It's also well-known for its strong resistance to fireblight.

[FB.]

Whilst most supermarket varieties are not as resilient as traditional varieties, it does not necessarily follow their offspring will be weak, especially when you factor in the contribution from the probable parent - an orchard crab-apple pollinator. A more likely difficulty is that many supermarket varieties are adapted to warm climates and probably don't like the English weather.

I've found Red Delicious seedlings fairly successful - it's not my favourite variety, but you never know. It's also well-known for its strong resistance to fireblight.

The crab pollinator might add disease resistance, but it won't be doing much for fruit quality.

I have a Red Delicious seedling - known as Jupiter! - and it's one of the best of the modern triploid varieties in my area - absolutely 100% immune to mildew every season and not attractive to woolly aphids either.
In contrast; Suntan was very prone to mildew (and suffered more codling than I'd like) while Jumbo had only average resistance to mildew. I no longer have Suntan or Jumbo (I did not mourn their loss) but Jupiter is a keeper.

[orangepippin]

Yes, Jupiter is one of the more reliable Cox offspring, and seems to benefit from the disease-resistance of the American Delicious. It's a half-sister / cousin of another well-known "English" apple, Kidd's Orange Red (Cox x Delicious). If you are wanting to breed your own apple variety, Cox x Delicious seems to have good potential.

[FB.]

If I were breeding on a serious basis, I would attempt to acquire some of the tetraploid variants - such as the Spartan 4N mutant or the Jonathan 4N mutants - both North American varieties with a somewhat different gene pool to the British apples. Spartan being 9,10 and Jonathan being 7,9.

If the 4N mutant strains were pollinated with suitably compatible English diploid varieties, I would expect the offspring should mostly be triploids, with the larger fruit size, greater tolerance of difficult conditions and better disease resistance often found in triploids.
Hugh Ermen's triploid "Jumbo" being a Jonathan 4N x Charles Ross seedling if I remember correctly.

For what it's worth; I have suspicions (but no definitive proof) that Laxton's Epicure might be tetraploid.

[RedThorn]

Well there you have it BttS

[boundtothesoil]

Well there you have it BttS

I suppose I do RedThorn. Although undaunted, I must admit to being a little disappointed (so far) not to have stumbled across a thriving breeders cell here, not withstanding the interesting comments by others on this thread.

There are older threads on the subject. In particular I've found what FB said on the thread below to be very useful and informative regarding breeding objectives and the choice of parental varieties etc.
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...eed_43863.html