Multidisciplinary Evaluation of New Apple Cultivars: The NE-183 Regional Project

Abstract

A multidisciplinary regional project for the evaluation of new apple cultivars was established in 1994 and given the designation of NE-183. Apples are and will continue to be an important fruit crop grown in much of the world. New cultivars are continually being discovered as chance seedlings or generated as the result of controlled crosses. There is no uniform system in place to systematically and uniformly evaluate and identify the most promising cultivars that are suitable to plant in specific climatic regions and that have a high probability for success. Apples are one of the most costly fruit crops to establish and bring into production; thus a mistake in cultivar selection may be economically catastrophic. This project was initiated to aid growers in making intelligent and in formation-based decisions about which new apple cultivars to grow. The NE-183 project “Multidisciplinary Evaluation of New Apple Cultivars” is unique in that it unites horticulturists, plant pathologists and entomologists and their individual expertise in selecting cultivars that not only have outstanding horticultural qualities but may also have resistance to important diseases and insects that afflict apples.