Good Fruit Grower

January 2013

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Y ou can find more about EverCrisp, including the license agreement and application for membership in MAIA, at the Web site http://evercrispapples.com. destinations for families seeking an on-farm experience that might last several hours or all day. To attract repeat business, they need a constant stream of desirable apples that start ripening in July and carry through past Halloween. These markets grow and sell as many as 50 varieties. Many markets stay open all year and need varieties that store well for winter and spring sale until new apples arrive. That���s where EverCrisp is scheduled to fit. ���Farm market people were not getting access to new varieties���that was a motive from the start,��� Dodd said. The MAIA process The MAIA niche From the start, Dodd said, the goals of the Midwest Apple Improvement Association were to find apples that fit into important niches in the marketing year and would suit grower/marketers in the lower Midwest, a region that stretches in a band across the center of the United States and includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri. The area needs late-blooming varieties that survive spring freezes. Spring there comes earlier than in New York and Michigan, bringing trees out of dormancy earlier and exposing them to late freezes that are a common occurrence. The MAIA mission statement begins: ���There is a need for a Midwest apple breeding program, as current apple breeding programs are unlikely to produce varieties that will be economically viable for the lower Midwest.��� The goal was to carry out a grower-driven, grower-involved breeding program with the help of Ohio State University and other research institutions. They wanted ���qualities acceptable to the modern consumer: size, firmness, storability, flavor, unique qualities, and maturity fitting with current or other new varieties to lengthen the apple harvest and marketing season.��� They also wanted fireblight and scab resistance and ���reliable and productive cropping equal to or better than Golden Delicious.��� Many of the growers who are in the Midwest Apple Improvement Association also have a long association with the PRI cooperative program���the Purdue-Rutgers-Illinois program that developed and released more than 30 scab-resistant varieties, including Goldrush. They all agreed that disease resistance is a worthy breeding goal, and Goldrush was a parent in early crosses the members made. Dr. Jules Janick, the Purdue University horticulturist who remains the key person in PRI, and Dr. Chris Doll from the University of Illinois, are both long-time members of the MAIA board. Dodd said MAIA has two or three other apples in the pipeline. ���We have a couple we like for their timing. There���s a gap now between Honeycrisp and Jonagold.��� That window in early to mid-September is currently filled by the old varieties Jonathan and Cortland. In the original home of the apple in central Asia, apples grow in pure stands in apple tree forests. MAIA���S special advisor These wild apples were collected W from trees growing in Kyrgyzstan. hile not associated with the Midwest Apple Improvement Association as its apple breeder, Ohio State University���s Dr. Diane Doud Miller has credentials as an apple geneticist and researcher with a special interest in working with apples from their original home in the central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. She also grew up on an Indiana fruit farm where she saw the devastation late freezes can cause. She is listed as a special advisor to the MAIA. When the Soviet Union collapsed, United States researchers, led by Phillip Forsline, the curator of the USDA���s Plant Genetics Resources Unit at Geneva, New York, organized an apple collection mission in 1995. A decade later, as a Fulbright Scholar, Miller traveled to Diane Doud Miller Kazakhstan to collect apples with a wide array of diverse genetic traits���including red flesh and disease resistance���from the place in the world where apples originated and grow wild in pure forest stands. Some of the seedlings from Kazakhstan, and many others, are now growing, protected by deer fence, at the Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio. There are several thousand trial seedlings from the MAIA, about 900 from Kazakhstan, about 30 elite Kazakh lines selected by Forsline at USDA, and several of Jules Janick���s PRI releases or advanced selections. Miller also made lasting contacts with researchers in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where apples grow wild in the Tien Shan Mountains. While Ohio is not today a leading producer of apples, its historical record is significant. Ohio was the home of John Chapman, known in the early 1800s as Johnny Appleseed, who spread apple seedlings from New England across the Midwest. ���R. Lehnert ��� www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JANUARY 1, 2013 21 photos courtesy of diane doud miller Breeding apples need not be difficult. Apples readily cross pollinate. The Midwest Apple Improvement Association growers would get together, discuss good potential parent varieties, and make crosses. Then they would collect seeds and plant them out on member farms. The seedlings required minimal space and care as they waited five years or more to taste the fruit. This all takes time, labor, and space���but is something growers can do as a sideline. To date, some 50,000 seedlings have been placed on growers��� farms to be evaluated. Given this history, it is not surprising that credit for making the EverCrisp cross goes to several people who worked together, and that the mother tree is located on one of their farms. Mitch Lynd and Greg Miller are given the credit for making the cross. Miller is the husband of Dr. Diane Doud Miller, the Ohio State University horticulturist and researcher who is listed as a ���special advisor��� to the organization. The tree is at County Line Orchards in Wabash, Indiana, owned by the Doud family and managed by Diane���s brother, David. ���We���re not professional breeders,��� Dodd said. Dodd, himself a grower and farm marketer (Hillcrest Orchards, Amherst, Ohio), manages two organizations involved in marketing apples for many Ohio growers (the Fruit Growers Marketing Association is a wholesale marketing cooperative, and the Ohio Apple Marketing Program, a checkoff program that promotes fresh Ohio apples). Dodd was recently selected to head Premier Apple Cooperative, a group that had been led by New York grower George Lamont. He is also president of the U.S. Apple Association this year. Because of these administrative abilities, he got the job of MAIA president���and of working with lawyers and making the patent applications. Diane Miller, and her Ohio State University extension associate Dr. Jozsef Racsko, have helped the growers in many ways. In 2009, they began conducting consumer taste tests to determine how well the public would like the new apple and other new strains MAIA is developing. ���For the last three or four years, we have taken fruit to the Fabulous Food Show in Cleveland,��� Dodd said. ���We have a booth there where we can do consumer evaluations. EverCrisp has scored very high.���

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