That's an important point Arthur - of the thousands of heirloom (antique)
apples, there are misnamed varieties,
duplicate names, and synonyms, and many strains have been developed from them.
A scab prone Baldwin might not actually
be a Baldwin. It is not always easy to know if a variety is in fact true to
name, or just similar. Scionwood gets mixed
up when labeling, tags get lost, or people just forget what the variety was
that their grandfather planted. I have grown
over 150 varieties, old and new, over the past 35 years. This is a small number
of varieties compared to the many
thousands listed in various pomology books published over the last few
centuries. The Book of Apples published in 1993
by the Brogdale Horticultural Trust in England describes over 2000 varieties
(cultivars) in their orchard collection.
There are also repositories in the United States that have rescued several
thousand antique varieties as well as
accessions from Kazakhstan where all our domestic varieties originate from.
I read somewhere that all the apples described in the two volume Apples of New
York (the Bible for identifying old
varieties), published in 1905, were chance seedlings except one variety.
Except for one, the rest were not deliberate
crosses. The observation here then, is that over a period of several hundreds
or thousands of years people would select
chance seedlings that suited them best for propagation in their area. This was
before the 1880's when chemicals were
introduced to control diseases and insect pests. If they lived in a warm,
humid region which encouraged scab and fire
blight, they would avoid planting varieties prone to these diseases. This was a
form of natural selection and a type of
informal breeding program. At least 90% of the old varieties I have collected
from orchards (often abandoned) in my
region do not get scab and this is a highly scab prone area.. Other varieties
prone to scab here might grow clean in
dryer regions without the need for fungicide applications. This observation
becomes apparent in organizations like
NAFEX where members exchange varieties from across the country.
Wealthy is one great old variety that is highly resistant to scab. So is
Gideon. Both originated with Peter Gideon in
Minnesota (chance seedlings also). The late Fred Janson (one of the founders of
NAFEX) believed, from his observation of
many years, that Blenheim Orange was completely immune to fire blight. Sadly,
such varieties were dropped from the
market place when chemicals made control of diseases possible for susceptible
varieties. Of course the concern for
pesticide and fungicide on health has prompted the search for natural/genetic
resistance in apples over the past three
or four decades. Dr. Robert Lamb did a lot of research in this area and
introduced some wonderful new resistant
varieties. None were perfect, some dropped early, or they didn't keep well, or
were biennial, etc. But still, there
have been some very good resistant varieties developed. Many growers have
tried some of them. Redfree is one that gets
a good reputation in some areas. Liberty, Prima, and Freedom are also good
disease resistant varieties, but may vary in
quality from region to region, and they may require more rigid harvesting
requirements. There are hundreds more.
The problem with these new disease resistant varieties, or even many old
heirloom varieties that resist disease, is not
their color, nor their flavor, nor storage and shipping quality, but in
marketing and public acceptance.
Daryl Hunter
Keswick Ridge
NB Canada
- Original Message -
From: Arthur Harvey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Apple-Crop apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: Apple-Crop: Time article (More on same)
Certainly in New England at this time, Baldwin is very close to scab immune.
But not all
trees described as Baldwin are necessarily genetically the same. Yes, the
organic apples
grown in eastern Europe or western Asia would not meet American standards for
appearance
or other qualities, although consumers seem to accept them. So maybe there is
something
we don't know.
--- Daniel Cooley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Mo, you're right about the breeding programs attempting to develop
resistant varieties, but I'm not sure they've done it.
Some history: up until the last part of the 1800's, with rare
exceptions, the varieties of apples grown commercially were from
chance seedlings. It was common in the early 1800's in New England to
throw a bunch of seeds from cider pomice out and scratch them into
the ground, in a year or two transplant the ones that looked
promising , and then after that see which trees had reasonably edible
fruit. Of course, there were named varieties, in fact, lots of them.
One source I've read suggested that there may have been as many as
14,000 named apple varieties in the U.S. at the peak in the
nineteenth
