Ooh this method does sound cool! I’m a hardware engineer by profession, comma, and a mom of two small kids. I was a tad ambiguous lol. I got my winter order of bare root apple trees from Trees of Antiquity today! It begins!
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The seedlings from Trees of Antiquity look really good. I got Belle de Boskoop (1856 Holland), Ananas Reinette (1500’s France), and White Permain (1200’s England). I’m expecting more trees from Cummins, namely Ashmead’s Kernel and yes it’s very trendy right now haha (1700’s England), Freiherr von Berlepsch which I think is the same as Berlepsch mentioned in the paper as being high phenolic acids (1880’s Germany, Ananas Reinette x Ribston Pippin), Orleans Reinette (1700’s France), Virginia Crab as a pollinator and cider apple (1700’s Virginia USA), and some dwarfing rootstock for some grafting.
I tried to get a bunch in the same bloom period as well. Since I couldn’t find the exact varietals for sale from the paper that they said were best against raw apple allergies (Berlepsch, Dülmener Rosenapfel, Oldenburger, Ontario), I just went for apple varietals that were old hoping to be pre-modern apple genetic bottleneck. A fun thing is that these apples higher in phenolic acids are also better for your health because of higher antioxidants, so it’s not just a benefit to those of us allergic to raw apples. I can’t wait for these to get to fruiting age so I can test which ones I might be able to eat raw without an allergic reaction!
That is a very worthy landrace goal, and I have never heard of an allergy like that before! How interesting! I’m sorry to hear you’re allergic to most modern raw apples, and I hope you’ll be able to grow a population that is perfect for you.
Would any of the Albert Etter apples be promising for you? He did some remarkable apple breeding work about a century ago. Is that too recent?
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Thanks for the welcome Emily! I think the Albert Etter apples stem from (har har) Surprise which might be old enough, pre 1831, but I’m not sure what else he used in his main crosses with Surprise. My conjecture is that Cox’s Orange Pippin is the part of the bottleneck that dropped the phenolic acid content in major apples. But I could be wrong. But maybe it’s from Golden Delicious or some other apple in the parentage of modern apples. If I can taste some of the Etter apples I could tell you if I’m allergic or not lol. Maybe I’ll grab some scions from Edholm at Skillcult and do some frankengrafting to get some post-Etter apples to taste in the near future. The one interesting thing about the red fleshed apples is that I’m thinking maybe the anthocyanins serve a similar anti-allergy punch like the phenolic acids tested for in the paper, they are both polyphenols. So who knows? I’m happy to be a tasting guinea pig for modern apple allergies if anyone has apples for me to try out. I tried finding orchards near me with heritage apples to taste and I couldn’t find any which is why I’m growing my own. Maybe they exist but the internet doesn’t know about them. I guess I could take a trip to an apple festival this fall though and try a bunch. Before I saw that youtube video from Eckart the german apple farmer I was resigned to never comfortably eating a fresh apple again. It gave me hope that I might join my fresh apple obsessed four year old who isn’t currently allergic and enjoy some fresh apples with her.
My neighbor has a really old and productive unknown what it is apple tree that they don’t like the apples off of that keeps splitting and surviving (I use them for apple butter every year, two years ago I got 15 gallons of apples off it), so I might just graft some on there. And I planted a Gala at my other neighbor and a Honeycrisp at my house two years ago that I have pruned and shaped, both are great candidates for grafting a bunch of ancient or unusual scions onto. Another friend in town has a mega never pruned granny smith that I got 10 gallons of apples off of last year (all I could reach with a telescoping picker, I made canned apple pie filling) and I can graft there too, and I should probably help him prune his tree a little this summer lol.
There is a german Initiative to collect data about apples for allergic people BUND Lemgo - Homepage
The website is in german, of the most interest to you is this document: https://www.bund-lemgo.de/download/012_Int_Apfelallergie_Plakat_Sortenliste_2024_12.pdf
It is in German but may be self explaining. Verträglich means tolerable and nicht verträglich not tolerable. The numbers are number of peope that self-reported this. If you don’t understand something, just ask!
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Mybrother in law has a similar peach allergy. Apparently the culprit is broken down by heat.
That would be neat, to find a peach he can tolerate raw. He mentioned apples at one point, but he doesn’t like apples. He does like peaches.
I tried similar way to produce apple trees last spring and yesterday i dug them out, here is the result:
Biggest roots (“Admiral”):
Smallest roots (“Acrobat” - columnary variety):
Waiting for buds to wake up before I cover the tree with soil again:
Most probably the only three “Admiral” trees with their own roots in the world:
So, it really works, even on columnary varieties. I am unsure if those with smallest roots will make it, would be probably better to give them more time to create bigger roots, but then, I think, the tree would not produce any new shoots this year.
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Großartig! Danke! (Ich kann Deutsch reden, ich hab in Berlin gewohnnt). I’m super excited that there’s a longer scientific project going on for this! I wish they put the years the apples are from in the study but maybe I’ll make up a table or webpage for that in English, and I’ll try to translate the apple varietals. I had trouble finding the varietals from the original study I linked earlier so I think it might be just a translation issue. Maybe I should start a new thread haha. Thanks for reaching out! Cool stuff!
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Just a random thought, but . . . is it possible the problem isn’t the modern varieties themselves, but the rootstock varieties? There are very few rootstocks that are commonly used now. If the most common rootstocks tend to send phenolic acid into the fruit, maybe the problem is that you need a special rootstock variety, or you need to figure out how to get apples on their own roots?
Seems like something worth looking into, if you haven’t yet.
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That’s an interesting idea. Fertilizer would be another variable. Also any environmental stress could have influence.
It could also be that storage in cold increases phenolic acids which would apply to pretty much any store bought apples, while heat breaks it down so I would assume cooking the apples would solve the issue.
Apparently apples are not even the most common source if high phenolic acid levels. According to this ( https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf0615247 ) research dark skinned plums and cherries had higher levels while they only found one apple variety. They also tested many berries and coffee. And they didn’t even get into vegetables.
Actually now that I looked into that study on old vs new varieties I wonder if it may be flawed.
They sourced all the new apples from a “local market” but all the old varieties were from a “private garden” which means all the old varieties were grown under the same conditions but the new apples were grown in different (potentially multiple different) growing conditions.
They did at least account for harvest maturity. But what about soils, fertilizer, even storage after harvest?
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That’s a very interesting point. Looking into a study’s methodology is always important. Sometimes a study didn’t truly test what it thought it was testing. That’s why replication is always important.
@witchy, have you tasted any of these older varieties yourself? If so, you’ve performed a scientific study of your own, and I’d be interested in hearing about your results! If you’ve been able to replicate their results, that will be strong evidence that their methodology didn’t cause any problems. 
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Yeah that one particular study isn’t perfect, but I think the follow ups with community reporting that Laura posted are collectively better. https://www.bund-lemgo.de/apfelallergie.html
Also I started a new thread for all of this here: https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/breeding-apples-from-ancient-apples-for-people-allergic-to-raw-apples/3579
The thoughts on rootstock perhaps affecting the phenolic acid content is definitely a good theory to test as well. I haven’t been able to taste any ancient varietals yet but I’m excited to try them. A friend said there’s a rural apple festival close to Johnson City (I’m in Knoxville) and I will try to visit an orchard or two in advance to make some apple grower contacts. I’ll copy this to the new thread.
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Great idea!
Actually, I think we could merge the two threads. Perhaps that would be a good idea?
Hi Emily,
I think keeping the threads separate is probably better? I didn’t want to stomp all over the existing thread with my historical apple sleuthing haha. But I don’t know, I’m new here you tell me. Maybe all the threads are grex / landrace / adaptation style where all the seeds are mixed together!
Ha ha ha ha! That’s a fun way of looking at it!