Backyard apple breeding

Apple: Sansa

Shane Gadsby -

A very sweet apple with rich spiced flavour!

  • Vigour: Low
  • Precociousness: Medium
  • Resistances: Susceptible to brown rot
  • Size of fruit: Medium to small
  • Flowering: Mid-spring
  • Fruiting: Early autumn
  • Cropping: Medium
  • Ploidy: Diploid
  • Fruit colour: Red
  • Flesh colour: White
  • Leaf colour: Green
  • Parentage: Akane x Royal Gala
  • Descendants: Unknown
  • Biennialism: None observed
  • Growth habit: Upright spreading
  • Self-fertile: No

Created in 1969 by Yoshio Yoshida (of the Morioka Research Station, Iwate, Japan) and Don McKenzie (of what is now know as Plant & Food Research, New Zealand), by the former shipping pollen to the latter, who undertook the hand pollination efforts, and shipped the seeds back to Japan for growth and testing.

Code named Morioka Number 42, before being released under the name Sansa in 1988, it has been said to make excellent pies, and exceptional dried apple rings, in accompaniment to it's excellent dessert apple qualities.

It has been noted to have week limbs, and often breaks under its fruit load, making support or thinning a requirement of the variety.

NOTE: I have yet to try this apple directly, and so have relied on others for information related to this variety.
This entry will be updated when I am able to purchase/graft this variety myself.