Inspired by @UnicornEmily thread on whats inspiring in apples (What kinds of apple varieties would excite you?) i decided to write down my (already ongoing) project for apple trees.
The background:
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My parents farm is at almost 1100 meters above sealevel. Commercial fruit growing in Switzerland happens mostly between 400 and 600 meters above sealevel. Traditional orchards with standard trees are also mostly below 800 meters.
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My mother and I are very interested in fruit growing and have planted many or even most of the apple (and other fruit) varieties that are reccomended for high altitudes and available to us.
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Since we are an organic farm (and I am not interested in using most of the organic sprays, anyways, too) robust varieties are a must.
The goals are:
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Evaluating which varieties are suitable under our conditions. Grafting over the ones that are not, with the ones that have proven themselves.
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Breeding new, tasty, healthy apple varieties for different uses and with different ripening times that thrive under my conditions.
The different stages in reaching this goal are:
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Identifying and testing cultivars that may be suitable. This is the stage we are in right now. We have planted almost all apple that are available in Switzerland and said to be suitable for altitudes AND healthy. As a next step I have analysed the swiss national information system for the conservation and sustainable use of plant ressources (PGREL) to identify accessions which were found at altitudes above 800 meters and selected those that have favourable test results for disease resistance and taste. The resulting list contains 35 accessions/varieties, with 20 we don’t yet have. I am planing to add 5 varieties that have already proven themselves. This makes 40 trees. With these I want to make a small orchard on M26 or another weak to middle growing rootstock, so I can evaluate them sooner than standard trees. I want to plant 3 trees of every accession/ variety so my results have at least some scientific merit.
Back to the results we already have: My mother has been planting standard trees for the last 20 years. Since these are late to come into fruit and since they grow slower than in more favorable climates, we are only now coming to the first conclusions which varieties prove themselves. -
Indentifying weaknesses in cultivars that are suitable and finding breeding partners for them to correct these faults. This happens at the same time as step 1. Additionally, I try to stay aware what kind of problems are described in the literature for my trees.
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Making controlled crosses and grow out the offspring. I plan to cull heavily from the beginning if the seedlings are not vigorous or unhealthy.
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Graft the offspring on small rootstock to evalutate them but also let the original tree grow and evaluate them in this form too.
List of cultivars that have proven themselves in no particular order:
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Prinz Albrecht von Preussen
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James Grieve
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Jaques Lebel
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Red Astrachan
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Gelber Edelapfel/ Golden noble
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Beauty of Kent
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Charlamofsky/ Duchess of Oldenburg
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Piros
Some that show promise:
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Cellini
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Retina
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Kaiser Willhelm
Some questions or roadblocks:
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How do avoid I selecting for triploidy while selecting for inital vigor? Not that I have something against triploid varieties per se, but they have significant drawbacks in not being suitable as breeding parents.
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Many varieties that are known to do well in high altitudes are themselves already triploid and are therefore not useable as breeding parents. While I can evaluate a variety and see if it has merit itself, I can not improve it by breeding. This frustrates me…
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The long timespans involved. I am 28 and have therefore (I guess) about 50 years to go. I hope I can achieve something in this time.
