Backyard apple breeding

Home scale apple breeding project: Introduction

Shane Gadsby -

Have you ever wanted to create your own variety of Apple?
I'm documenting everything that I go through on my path to do just that!

The project so far...

In late may 2021 I placed orders for a the following rootstocks (25 total):


I also placed orders for the following scions (27 total):

I then had the task of bench-grafting all 27 scions, and while a pro might have knocked that out before brekky, this was the first real time I've grafted anything (well... ok, I managed a couple nectarines a month before this).
To say I was nervous is an understatement, and so studied everything I could find regarding grafting, from proper knife sharpening, when to use what graft, and what to seal the graft with.

To that end I cannot recommend Steven Edholm's YouTube channel SkillCult more, I also learned so much from folks like:

And as credit alone to each of the amazing folks above, I've had a nearly 100% success rate! (I'll do a write-up specific to the grafting soon!)

I also bought 7 pre-grafted trees:

But wait! There's more!

I also planted 59 seedlings (unknown pollen parents):

  • Ambrosia x 10
  • Pink Lady (aka Cripps Pink) x 5
  • Royal Gala x 7
  • Bravo! x 1
  • Jazz x 7
  • Granny Smith x 7
  • Envy x 5
  • Unknown (likely Royal Gala, and Pink Lady) x 17

Each was planted into trial rows (super tight spacing, less than 10cm apart), grouped by their seed parent. They'll be grafted to rootstocks in 2022 to help hasten their flowering, and their roots used as seedling rootstock in future trials.

Woof!

That's 94 total trees! Each picked for a specific aspect (flavour, skin colour, flesh colour, aroma, texture, growth habit).
Each one that flowers I've collected pollen from, and where possible have already started to make some deliberate crosses.

Ok, so what are you looking to actually do

The tl;dr is that I'm just having fun creating something new!
The longer answer is that I'm hoping to create an new set of varieties that combine the following traits

  • Columnar growth habit + Red flesh + Green skin
  • Columnar growth habit + Red flesh + Dark skin
  • Columnar growth habit + Large fruit + Dessert flavours
  • Columnar growth habit + Low chill requirement + red flesh
  • Columnar growth habit + Low chill requirement

As you can tell, columnar is a very important trait to me, as they are naturally dwarfing, often precocious, super compact (and so perfect for backyard/potted orchards), and typically high yielding!

Red flesh is also something of interest to me, but despite its frequency in the list, is less important that breeding new, and interesting low chill apples!

Low chill isn't important for everyone, but here in Australia there are large parts of the country that simply do not received enough chill units to encourage almost all apple varieties to flower.
As such apples like Dorsett, Anna, and Tropical Beauty are more common in these areas, but the variation between them is low, making for a much less interesting cohort. Low chill apples are also commonly observed as having hyper-precocious offspring, with seedlings derived from them flowering as early as their second year even without being grafted to precocious rootstocks!

Hope you'll join me on my journey!