Home scale apple breeding project: 2021 cross pollinations
As this is the first year of the project, most of these crosses are practice for future seasons. Though I still tried to choose crosses that could be interesting, and will be collecting and growing any seeds I get!
Huonville Crab x Dorsett Golden Apple
I chose this cross as a way of both as a way of improving upon the Huonville, but also to try and get some of the low chill requirements.
Dorsett seedlings (as well a few other low chill varieties) have been documented as being highly precocious, flowering much younger than is typical of apples grown from seeds. This would be great to have in my lines, cutting the time I'll need to wait before doing fruit evaluations down significantly!
Though I'm likely to continue to use Dorsett in future, I'd have preferred to use either Anna, or even more so Tropical Beauty, but neither of my tree's were mature enough this season to provide pollen.
Huonville Crab x Golden Delicious
I know, I know, Golden Delicious is done to death (30+ named varieties have it somewhere in it's lineage!), so why use it?
- Golden Delicious is a great apple, if overrepresented in breeding programs
- It produces high volumes of pollen (probably due to being a tetraploid)
- It's pollen is highly compatible (probably for the reason above)
- It's somewhat low chill (~500 chill units)
- I had it - This is unfortunately the biggest reason, it was the first tree of mine to start offering pollen, and so was what I had on hand when making the first crosses...
That said, Golden Delicious is likely to produce larger, sweeter, crisper apples, and hopefully the red flesh!
Magnus Summer Surprise x Baldwin
Upfront I should say that this cross was made before learning that Baldwin's pollen quality is so low it's often considered sterile. I'm hoping this turns out to be a bit overstated, but the fact it's a confirmed triploid does fit this assumption...
I chose Baldwin because it's a highly respected historic apple that has very impressive keeping qualities, a sweet apple juice like taste with floral notes...
And because it's the maiden name of my partner.
Magnus Summer surprise is an somewhat improved Huonville Crab descendent with stronger, more complex, flavours. It is not however very long keeping, nor is it's flesh texture particularly modern (being harder than it is crisp).
This makes Baldwin a excellent pollination partner... Assuming any of the pollen is even accepted...
Magnus Summer Surprise x Golden Delicious
The same reasons as the above Huonville Crab x Golden Delicious cross apply here too, with my hope being extra sweetness, and better fruit texture.
Golden Delicious x M. Purpurea
Golden Delicious has a bit of a history with being a great pollination partner for the improvement of wild crab apple families (Anna, Dorsett Golden Apple, Tropical Beauty, etc). As such I decided it'd be interesting to try and see what we could get from these two.
M. Purpurea is sold as an ornamental, as so has no documentation on existing fruit qualities (flavour, texture, flesh colour), so could only be improved with Golden Delicious!
Dorsett Golden Apple x M. Purpurea
I'm really hoping this one takes!
I chose M. Purpurea for it's dark purple... well... everything! It's got dark purple leaves (when the leaves are young at least), dark purple fruit, and deep pink flowers. It's early flowering, and described as precocious- A trait I'm extremely interested in getting mixed into my lines!
Dorsett is a descendant of Golden Delicious (though there is debate), and so should bring many of the properties that are desirable with it, plus it's noted low chill, and it's precocious seedlings (hoping that gets reinforced by the M. Purpurea's precociousness!)
M. Purpurea x Dorsett Golden Apple
As above, but switched the seed and pollen parent around.
I've looked pretty hard, and can't seem to find any studies what difference it makes which of the cross candidates are the pollen parent and which is the seed parent. But figured it might hedge my bets a little!
M. Purpurea x Golden Delicious
M. Purpurea had so many flowers this year, so I took advantage and crossed a few flower groups. Dorsett gave me very little pollen this year, so rather than take a chance with the middle left over pollen, I figured I'd use some Golden Delicious pollen. Same reasons as the reversed cross abovse.
Baldwin x Huonville Crab
I was really excited to cross the Magnus Summer Surprise with Baldwin, but since having learned it's pollen isn't very good, I took another tack, and pollinated the Baldwin with its neighbour (next pot over) and Magnus Summer Surprise's parent, the Huonville Crab! I'd love to get the beautiful red flesh, and silver leaves of the Huonville Crab, with Baldwin's medium fruit size, long storage life, crisper texture, and sweeter flavour!
I should say that many research papers state that Baldwin may need two pollen parents in order to set fruit (due to it's triploid nature), and so the Huonville Crab was used, and a few days later, the Magnus Summer Surprise was used (some papers said a few days gap would encourage the first pollen parent to be more prominent)
So that's my 2021 crosses.
I'm hopeful, but not expecting a huge take, many of the tree's are very young, and my technique still in development. Either way it's been a huge amount of fun, and I'm excited to see what I get!