Apple Scion Cultivars

Apple Scion Cultivars. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

I love looking through the Spring seed catalogues and deciding what to put into the garden but you can’t just pick willy-nilly. It does take special varieties of plants to thrive in your particular region. Kate Evans with WSU’s Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center talks about choosing specific apple scion cultivars.

EVANS: So how are we doing that? How are we finding the right genetics for Washington? Well I think within the breeding program we’re fairly confident now that we’ve got a system set up that enables us to find the right selections that will work well for you guys here in Washington.

Evans was talking to a large group of apple producers at the recent Hort Convention where she looked at their program from back to front starting with what she calls the elite selections.

EVANS: What we’re doing is really seeing how the genetics that we’ve selected are going to grow for you in a variety of different grower sites. And we’re really giving those selections, those elite selections a pretty good test to see just how well they grow.

She says this gives individual producers a chance to come out and actually see how these genetics are progressing and how they might work in their orchards.

EVANS: We’re testing those elites on how well they perform on the wider setting. Obviously you want to have new varieties that are going to work for you with the infrastructure that you’ve got on a wide scale so how well will those varieties cope on a packing line. How well will they store?

More with Kate Evans tomorrow.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.