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Apple History

Winter 1999, Volume 1, Number 1

Spring 1998, Making the Best Better

O.S.U. researchers Dr. Dave Ferree, Dr. Diane Miller, Pr. Joe Scheerens, and technicians Mr. John Schmidt and Mr. Dave Scurlock traveled from their base at Wooster to the Lynd Fruit Farm several days during bloom to cross-pollinate apples using the parents suggested by the Midwest Apple Improvement Association (M.A.I.A.) membership as best named cultivars for improving cropping reliability especially with regard to escaping spring frost damage and/or having some disease resistance. The crosses and resulting number of harvested apples were as follows:

If each of these apples yields six seedlings our initial batch will be about 9,300 trees. We need as many members as possible to start thinking about where they will put these. The trees must be protected from deer, weeds, leaf feeding insects (primarily aphids and leaf hoppers) and diseases. The trees will be ready to go to the field in the spring of 2000 or 2001. Plan to plant them at 3' by 14'.

We have received technical support and encouragement from Phil Forsline, curator of the apple germplasm collection for the U.S.D.A. at Geneva, N.Y. and many researchers and apple breeders including Dr. Jules Janick at Purdue. Dr. Curt Rom at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Herb Aldwinkle at Cornell, and Dr. Susan Brown at Cornell. Let me know how many trees you can take and let's see what we can do when we put our minds to it. I think we might surprise some folks.

The strongest candidates are thought to be GoldRush, Scarlett O'Hara, and Honeycrisp because they have both disease resistance and resistance to spring frost. Others on the list known to be somewhat frost resistant and to have many other good traits included Golden Delicious, Melrose, Law Rome, Ralls Jeanette, Sweet 16 and Co-op 33.

Co-op 33 is a late blooming, frost resistant, disease resistant, P.R.I. (Purdue, Rutgers, Illinois) cultivar that appears to have about everything a grower could want including a ceramicly smooth finish, high percentage purple/red color. great flavor, very yellowish flesh, and excessive cropping every year with no hint of biennialism. Its obvious flaw is small fruit size. There may be others but for now it looks like a cross with Melrose (very large, productive, good keeping quality, good flavor, no pre-harvest drop and moderately resistant to late spring frosts) could generate a winner. Poor color on the original Melrose strain and a tendency to russet in many years are its major faults, both of which are no problem with Co-op 33.

Fuji was also on the list but with huge reservations because it has resistance to neither spring frosts nor any diseases. One of its parents, Ralls Jeanette, is one of the latest blooming, most frost resistant apples known and its legendary keeping quality (it was locally known as Never Fail and Rock Rimmon for decades) is strongly expressed in Fuji. Unlike Fuji, Ralls is thought to be self-fertile and is known to produce excessive crops back-to-back with little tendency for biennial bearing. Many of us feel that, for our purposes, Ralls may make a better breeding parent than Fuji. But no one had any Ralls trees in the area so Fuji was used. Fuji, like its other parent Red Delicious, is one of the worst known apples with regard to its resistance to spring frost damage and its biennialism can be a problem in areas where they escape the spring frosts.

Scarlett O'Hara was known as Coop 25 for many years and was quickly recognized as superior in many ways but was not introduced because of extensive fireblight losses in early trials. The tree looks like a Rome tree. The terminal bearing habit and big course buds on the scattering of short shoots makes it extremely productive with heavy annual cropping like Granny Smith, Rome and Cortland. It matures here in late September with Delicious but has a huge picking window of optimum maturity. It hangs forever becoming sweeter and sweeter and keeps with the best for at least five months in regular cold storage. It blooms late with Rome and in 1997 it had to be thinned when many cultivars froze out entirely during bloom in the Midwest. Other than its fireblight susceptibility, which is now thought to be about the same as Rome, its worst fault is moldy core. A zinc-based fungicide at petal fall seems to control it here. Scarlett O'Hara has caused a lot of excitement among the French who hold flavor in high regard and have concluded that tip bearing growth habit results in the highest and most consistent yields. It does not color to a full red on older trees. No doubt red mutants will be discovered. It Is resistant to both scab and mildew.

Sweet 16 is late blooming, large fruited, anise flavored, sweet and suspected to carry resistance to fireblight and powdery mildew. It appears to be scab susceptible like Jonathan in that, while it will get scab and requires fungicidal protection. it never has much when others around it are devastated. Like Northern Spy, one of its parents, it lacks precocity but precocious rootstocks make it very acceptable and in fact noticeably better than Northern Spy. Like Honeycrisp, it matures here with McIntosh. Its keeping quality is poor like McIntosh and although it can drop in hot weather its not as bad as McIntosh. Its late bloom, large size, and high flavor make it an interesting candidate as a breeding parent.

Honeycrisp is very large, a little weak on flavor, has a very interestingly explosive flesh texture, is very precocious and productive. keeps well, hangs well and it doesn't get scab but is the strongest apple attractant we have known for several different leafhoppers. Its fireblight and mildew status is uncertain at this time.

GoldRush is the most flavor intense apple we know with very high acids and very high sugars (14 to 18 is normal), very precocious and productive, resistant to fireblight, mildew and scab, hangs well and keeps almost as well as Fuji. It is a little smaller than we would like (about like Gala) and it matures at the end of our season with Fuji. Originally we were disappointed with the finish but, as often is the case with apple finish, it gets better after four or five years and although we haven't used "Provide" on it we suspect it could make it supermarket acceptable. The texture is very dense and firm and although many like it, a texture like Honeycrisp, would be considered an improvement by most tasters.

The Honeycrisp × GoldRush cross was our highest priority cross this spring. It produced about 250 apples which should mean about 1,500 to 2,000 seedlings.

Numbers - Numbers - Numbers

Jeff Crosby agreed with a comment that Ken Livermore once made to me when I asked him how many seedlings of a particular cross it takes to have a reasonable assurance of producing at least one offspring better than either parent In the case of apple breeding. He said if he planted 30 seedlings, It would be extremely rare to improve on the parents. If he planted 300 seedlings there was a small chance of improving on the parents but if he were to plant 3.000 seedlings it would be very likely that at least one and probably several would be an Improvement upon the parents. Mr. Crosby and Mr. Livermore spent many years as apple breeders at Purdue and Cornell respectively.

Typical Results

The following are actual examples showing what one can expect when two superior apple cultivars are crossed:

Probably half of the apple crosses ever made never produced a single tree worthy of further testing. It is rare to find a cross that producers four or more progeny that are selected for advanced testing. Perhaps this is why the New Zealanders chose Splendor to cross with Gala where the objective was to up-size Gala and have the highest possible number of acceptable progeny.

One other cross that has generated at least four, and possibly five, selections for advanced testing is Co-op 17 × Golden Delicious. Among the progeny was Co-op 38 or Goldrush. Co-op 17 is a disease resistant selection whose pedigree includes Golden Delicious. Melrose, and Illinois #2 ("winesap" sport).

When we asked Dr. Jules Janick whether it was a better breeding strategy to repeat past successful crosses to generate still larger numbers of progeny to choose from or use as parents the best selections out of the existing progeny, he said always cross the best available with the best available moving forward. However this may mean making frequent use of a 'killer" parent from the past like Golden Delicious.

Cox Orange Pippen has been the "killer" parent for the English apple breeders. Suncrisp, Gala, Rubinette, and Elstar all have both Cox and Golden Delicious in their pedigree. Some of us believe Suncrisp could be the next "killer" parent while others believe it will be GoldRush or Scarlett O'Hara.

Pristine

Pristine is an apple cloaked in mystery. It is a cross between Camuzat and Co-op 10 which has Starking Delicious, McIntosh, and Golden Delicious in its pedigree. Camuzat came from Turkey. When Ed Fackler was touring the old Soviet Union he saw an apple tree in the collection at the Mycop Station that looked completely different than any other apple tree he had ever seen except Pristine, which it closely resembled. He asked what it was and their guide said it was the only known tree in the world that was a cross between a Hawthorn and an apple. Pristine could possibly be carrying a whole batch of new genetic diversity. Accordingly a cross of Co-op 10 × Pristine has been made we have 1,719 seeds of this cross ready to germinate. The results are expected to be very interesting.

No two seedlings, even of the same cross, are exactly alike. The bigger the number of seedlings being cared for the greater the cost of the program. When subjected to the overhead of a university the cost of caring for huge numbers of seedlings becomes prohibitive. Our thinking is to bring together a large group of cooperators (like you) who each takes care of some seedlings and evaluates them for the common good of the group. Large growers might take care of two or three acres and smaller growers proportionately less but each according to his own willingness and desire.

One cost effective strategy is to figure out how to get rid of the losers as early as possible. Fortunately breeders have some screening techniques to sort out the losers early in the life of the trees. Unlike the computer that's creating this document where it is wise to save early and save often, in apple breeding one learns to discard early and discard often. Failure to discard ruthlessly will overwhelm the evaluation process and the budget.

BIG Leaves = BIG Apples

One of the most frequent reasons for discarding apple seedlings is small fruit size. Apple trees with small leaves nearly always have small apples. English apple breeders at East Malling established a protocol for eliminating trees with relatively small leaves long before they fruited. In some apple breeding programs selecting only the largest leaves biases the progeny in favor of triplolds which really enhances fruit size but triplolds in continental climates have a poor record with regard to both winter injury and spring frost damage. Jonagold, Mutsu, Spigold, and Stayman Winesap, all triploids. were completely lost in the April 10, 1997 freeze through the Midwest. Discarding the smallest leafed seems wise but selecting only the largest could be a mistake for our purposes.

Late Leafing Out Equals Late Bloomers

"Date of leafing out of juvenile seedlings was shown by Tydeman (1964) to be highly correlated with flowering date in the adult trees, and elimination of early leafing seedlings in the nursery during the second season of growth (15 months after seed germination) was very effective in delaying bloom date in the seedling population." This is a quote from Shawn A. Mehlenbacher in a study he did to investigate the relationship of germination time of apple seeds and flowering times. It was Mehlenbacher's conclusion that discarding early germinating seeds was an effective way to eliminate early leafing seedlings, and hence early bloomers. In the case of Suntan late bloom more than compensated for the fact that it was, a tender triploid in April 1997.

Two of the anchor cultivars at Lynd Fruit Farm have been Rome and Prime Gold. The key to their c consistently high yield has been their late bloon dates. The latest blooming disease resistant cultivar we have grown here is Scarlett O'Hara. Nova Easygro is a disease resistant cultivar that seems very frost resistant but is not a late bloomer which suggests there is more to frost resistance than just late bloom. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this in the April 1997 freeze in the Midwest was Ohio Nonpareil. It was one of only four cultivars out of 93 that had no dead flower buds yet it is one of the earliest bloomers known. Ed Fackler refers to this as the "chickweed factor". having noted that freezing to 20 degrees Fahrenheit seems to have little adverse effect on chickweed.

How Late Is Late Enough?

Your Board of Directors has wrestled at length with this question. To those of us growing apples in the Midwest It appears as if this question has never been taken seriously by traditional apple breeders.

Perhaps closer to reality is that the apple breeders watched in stunned disbelief as market forces drove the entire U.S. apple industry into a stampede of obsessive Red Delicious production. For 100 years growers declined the apple breeders' best efforts in favor of this chance discovery of, at best, mediocre quality and fraught with serious production limitations like spring frost sensitivity and pollination problems.

There are many apple traits essential for competitive success and breeders in different places have assigned different levels of priority to them depending on the apparent greatest needs of the apple industry in their region. Since tree fruit production has become concentrated in regions with climate. moderating maritime influence for several reasons including escaping spring frost damage, selecting for late bloom and frost resistance, has diminished in importance.

Meanwhile many apple growers away from maritime influence have become addicted to costly orchard heating systems for their frost sensitive Red Delicious or have become Rome and Golden Delicious dependent. As world apple prices plummet, especially for Red Delicious, and as the shelf space for Rome continues to shrink many of us are enduring the pain of withdrawal symptoms. For many of us the question is "should the minimum standard for spring hardiness be pegged at the level afforded by Golden Delicious or a little more hardy at the level of Rome?" Your board voted to set the standard at the level of Rome.

Malus coronaria

As a point of interest, the apple that is native throughout the Midwest and has sustained thousands of years of natural selection pressure is a crab apple called Malus coronaria. It always blooms three to five days after Rome here in our country. You can spot colonies of it in abandoned pastures, the edges of woods, along streams, and in fence rows by its late bloom and pink flowers. Positive identification is easy upon closer examination because the flowers come in clusters of six, seven or eight and are not attached at the same point but arranged in more of a branched cluster or raceme. Maybe nature is trying to tell us something about when apples should bloom for sustainable success here in the Midwest.

Scab & Early Detection

It is a foregone conclusion that apples of the future will be scab resistant and fortunately scab susceptibility can easily be determined early and susceptible seedlings discarded. However if we could find a "killer" apple that bloomed as late or later than Rome, disease susceptibility would be acceptable. Not only would growers probably want to plant it but also we would want to immediately cross it with all our best disease resistant selections. Hence some of our crosses will use disease susceptible parents in the quest for improvement among the late bloomers.

Inheritance Predictions

For apples many traits are inherited according to a simple rule. The mean of the progeny equals the mean of the parents. For example, if the bloom date of apple "A" is May 1 and the bloom date of apple "B" is May 20, most of the progeny will bloom between May 1 and May 20 with the greatest number clustered around May 10. With regard to maturity dates it is well known that the mean of the progeny will always be earlier than the mean of the parents. Accordingly it takes more seedlings to find a winner that matures in late October than late August. If one looks at the latitudes of the native Malus seversei apple forests in Kazakstan, the source of our edible apples, it's about the same as 60 miles south of Columbus, Ohio on the south side and 150 miles north of Minneapolis on the north side with little or no maritime influence anywhere. Maturity much after mid-September here runs into increasingly high risk of freezing temperatures before maturity.

With regard to fruit size, while a few are up to three inches, most of the apples in the Kazakstan forests are around 35 millimeters in diameter or about 1.5 inches. It has long been known that the mean of the progeny is always smaller than the mean of the parents in apple breeding. Apple breeders are always struggling for fruit size.

For breeding parents large and late is highly desirable but rare in apples. When coupled with flavor, appearance, keeping quality, disease resistance, insect resistance, yield potential, and hardiness, it is like looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack. The good news is that the range of diversity within apples is so vast that the needles are in there!

Elusive Flavor Intensity

If flavor intensity is inherited like most other traits, i.e. if the mean of the progeny equals the mean of the parents, it would seem like a good idea to have identified a few apples with the most intensive flavor (high sugars combined with high acids) to be used as breeding parents to correct for bland or boring flavor. When Ed Fackler and I reviewed a long list of possible candidates our personal favorites included: GoldRush, Suncrisp, Russet Beauty, Tydemn's late Orange, Fiesta, Ellison's Orange and Sweet 16. All but the first and last on this list has Cox Orange Pippin as one of its parents suggesting that it is a good source of flavor intensity. Flavor intensity to the extent expressed in Cox Orange Pippin must be fairly rare or the English surely wouldn't suffer all the production hardships associated with the growing of Cox Orange Pippin.

Kazakstan Trees

The Kazakstan trees received by Mitch Lynd in the summer of 1997 made little or no growth because it was such a late start for them and many became mildew infected late in August. They were over-wintered In pots in an underground storage at Wooster.

We decided not to take a chance on putting them in the field in such a weakened condition but to up-can them and grow them under intensive care at the Ohio State University (O.S.U.) in campus starting in the greenhouse for extra development. M.A.I.A. paid O.S.U. $2,500 for this project. The trees did fantastic and are now back in the Wooster storage awaiting planting this spring at Lynd Fruit Farm where they will be planted 3' apart in rows 14' apart.

No one expects any of these 500 trees to produce a commercially viable apple but it is hoped that 10 years from now the best of them will reveal some useful breeding traits. We are already certain they contain sources of disease resistance not found in any currently available stocks. The best will be selected and their genetics incorporated with the best we have at that time. We feel certain we can move back the bloom time and bolster existing disease resistance with the genes in these trees.

More Kazak Trees

Another 400 seedlings from the Kazakstan forests have been selected as very late to germinate. These are from the collection expedition of 1996, screened for late germination in early 1997, and screened for apple scab in 1998. About 20% have scab resistance. There were two mother trees in which 1000/6 of their progeny were scab resistant. They will be shipped here in late March and planted with the other 500 trees at Lynd Fruit Farm.

Mind Out Of Box

Most of us suffer from the constraints of conventional thinking but when the English apple growers, who all depend heavily on Cox Orange Pippin as their number one apple, went to the researchers for a brainstorming session on how to simplify Cox production they came up with a stroke of genius. One of the complaints was that it required, like most apples, the accompanying inefficiencies supporting cross pollination trees. Someone suggested they plant several thousand Cox trees (remembering there is safety in numbers and that apples have enormous diversity) on an island off the coast where there were no apple trees and watch for a limb to produce apples. If this were to happen it would have to come from a self-fertile mutation. They did it and "bingo" a limb with apples appeared and today they all grow a self-fruitful Cox without the hassle of pollinator varieties or bees.

Our Treasury

So far we have collected $4,600 in dues and written only two checks. One check was for $2,500 to O.S.U. for last year's care of the Kazak collection. The second check was for $320 to the Ohio Farm Bureau. We have incurred some legal expense with regard to seeking organizational advice but haven't been billed yet and all the board members and officers have donated their time, travel, meals, lodging, phone and office expenses to the organization as has the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation who has prepared brochures and mailed letters for us.

Filing Incorporation papers and applying for 501 C-3 charitable tax exempt status has been delayed awaiting the receipt of dues for this year. Consider this your official notice to pay your dues so we can get on with the unpleasant task of being officially organized in the form that has been suggested as best suited for achieving our long term goals. Many people have given freely of their time, advice and cash to help us get started but we have yet to find a lawyer in this classification. However we expect the cost to be less than $3,500.

Freeze Damage - 4/9/97 - Lynd Fruit Farm, Pataskala, Ohio

18F Min. - delicious in tight cluster

Group 1 No dead flowers on the tree

Group 2 Most king boom blooms alive, even on older wood

Group 3 Most flowers alive, some kings on older wood

Group 4 2 or 3 flowers alive per cluster but no live kings on older wood, many alive on new wood

Group 5 Mostly 1 live flower/cluster, many clusters dead, some with 2 or 3 live flowers/cluster

Group 6 1 live flower/2 to 6 clusters

Group 7 Almost no live flowers, but usually crops well here

Group 8 Almost no live flowers, and normally has heavy flower damage here

*May bloom dale for optimum pollination in Kent England, from "Apples" by Morgan and Richards