Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Adistinctionwaslatermadebetweentheverydwarfing'Paradise'or'French
Paradise' and the less dwarfing 'Doucin' or 'English Paradise' rootstocks
(Tukey,
kinds of 'Paradise' stock but as
new forms were introduced into trade there was much confusion over their
identity and trueness to type.
). Rivers (
) mentioned
Modern selection and breeding programmes
Rootstock selection at East Malling in England was initiated by R. Wellington
in
and then carried out by R. Hatton. Hattongathered
collectionsfrom
sources and found many of them to contain more than one phenotype or to
be improperly named. He reclassified them, in his first publication describing
nine types numbered I to IX in Roman numerals (Hatton,
). Subsequently
thenumberwasincreasedtosixteen(XVI),thentotwenty-four(XXIV).These
were subsequently given the designations 'EM.', and later 'M.',
.To
these were added two selections from crosses, 'EM.XXV' (later designated
'M.
to
×
')
fromacrossbetween'EM.XVI'and'EM.IX'.Theserootstockswereevaluated
first at East Malling (e.g. Preston
') from 'Northern Spy'
'EM.II' and 'EM.
' (later designated 'M.
) and subsequently world-wide.
Also in England, the John Innes Institute at Merton produced four apple
rootstocks from crosses between 'EM.II' and 'Northern Spy', the latter be-
ing resistant to the woolly aphid (
Eriosoma lanigerum
), which is a major pest
in Australia and New Zealand, but being difficult to propagate. The four
rootstocks were designated 'Merton
a,b,
', '
', '
' and '
' and were
introduced into New Zealand in
for preliminary trial.
A further series of rootstocks, the 'Malling-Merton' or 'MM.' series, were
produced by East Malling and John Innes staff, especially H.M. Tydeman
and M.B. Crane, collaborating to produce woolly aphid resistant rootstocks.
'Northern Spy' was used as one of the parents and various 'Malling' and
other rootstocks as the other parent. Fifteen rootstocks, designated 'MM.
'
to 'MM.
', survived initial screening and were taken on for trials (Tydeman,
') also arose from this crossing pro-
gramme but was found to lack the aphid resistance characteristic of the 'MM.'
series, so was given an 'EM.' number.
Most recently a new 'AR.' series of rootstocks has been bred at East
Malling using a range of parents including some of the 'M.' and 'MM.' series,
'Merton
; Tukey,
). 'EM.XXV' ('M.
', 'Robusta
J' and 'Ottawa
'. Some of these have markedly
outperformed 'M.
' in initial trials (Webster
et al.
,
). One, 'AR.
.
.
',
which has a similar effect on scion vigour to 'MM.
' has been released as
'M.
' although it is not part of the original 'M.' series.
In the former Soviet Union, at Michurinsk, V.I. Budagovsky introduced
'Red-Leaved Paradise' or 'Budagovsky
'in
as a product of 'M.
'
×
'Red
