How New Fruit Varieties Originate

Abstract

Plant improvement is nearly as old as agriculture. References were made in the earliest Chinese literature and the Bible to the importance of taking seeds cuttings, and scions from the best individual plants. One of the early Chinese emperors is said to have originated the Imperial rice by preserving and propagating a superior form which he noticed in a field. There are two broad groups of plants, from the standpoint of how they are reproduced. First, there are the grains, vegetables and grasses such as beans, peas, oats, wheat and corn, which propagate true-to-seed, except for simple fluctuating variations. A second group are those which are propagated by the use of such vegetative parts as bulbs, tubers, grafts, cuttings, runners and the like. Tulips, for example, are reproduced from bulbs; apples, pears, peaches, and other tree fruits, from grafts or buds; currants, gooseberries, cuttings; and strawberries, from runner plants. It is important to understand that if we plant 100 seeds of 'Golden Bantam' corn, we will get approximately 100 plants of the same kind; but if we plant 100 peach seeds of any variety, we will get 100 different kinds of peaches. Because of this situation, the fruit grower cannot plant seeds of the 'Elberta' peach to obtain trees of that variety, or seeds of the Jersey blueberry to propagate that variety. Instead, he usually depends on the nurseryman to grow the trees and plants for him by means of budding, grafting, rooting of cuttings, or other means of vegetative propagation. New fruit varieties originate in one of three ways - as chance seedlings, by hybridization, or as a result of mutation. By far the greatest number of the fruit varieties now grown were discovered as chance selections. Practically all of our apple varieties originated as chance seedlings in orchards, fence corners or back yards.