Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
'Pink Lady' is outstanding among the ultra-late cultivars bred by John
Cripps in Western Australia. The general expectation is that these cultivars,
maturing over a very long season, should be outstanding in firmness and post-
harvest storage life. 'Pink Lady', selected in
, is a cross between 'Golden
Delicious' and 'Lady Williams', a very late chance seedling, and is harvested
days after 'Granny Smith'. The fruits are medium to large, pink-blushed with
excellent crisp texture and juiciness and a flavour which combines sweetness
with acidity. It is now being produced in other areas with long growing seasons
such as South Africa.
Despite the apparent continued dominance of some very long established
cultivars there has been a steady process of uptake of new strains of these and
of new cultivars. This process is greatly facilitated by the use of high-density
plantings on dwarfing rootstocks. These high-density orchards can reach their
full yield levels within
years from planting or even less, greatly shortening
the time from the first launch of a new cultivar to the large-scale production
of its fruits.
or
Apple rootstocks
Selection of rootstock cultivars has played a dominant role in the development
of apple orchard systems.
The original reason for using rootstocks was that the scion cultivars which
produced desirable fruits could not be produced true-to-type from seed, and
in any case seedling apple trees have juvenile characteristics and are generally
slow to begin to bear fruits. Moreover most apple scion cultivars are very
difficult to root by vegetative means so were not readily produced as clonal
plants on their own roots.
Scion cultivars were therefore propagated from very early times by grafting
orbuddingontorootstocks.TheRomansgenerallyusedrootstocksraisedfrom
cuttingsorsuckerstakenfromexistingtrees(Roach,
)buttheearliest topics
on fruit growing in England advised rootstocks raised from seed. Mascall (
)
described how to raise rootstocks from cider apple pomace, i.e. the remains of
the apples, containing the seeds, after the juice had been extracted. Seedlings
from crab apples (
Malus sylvestris
) were often preferred because of their greater
uniformity.
The first mention of dwarfing apple rootstocks in the literature was in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the name 'Paradise' was recorded
by Ruellius (
) described the way in which the roots
of a dwarf 'Paradise' apple sent up many shoots and suckers as a method of
increase and noted that whatever fruit (cultivar) was grafted on it would also
be dwarfed.
), and Parkinson (
