Apples/Cultivars

Apple cultivars thumb|right|Different kinds of apple cultivars in a supermarket thumb|'Sundown' apple cultivar and its cross section There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples.Elzebroek A.T.G. Wind, K. Guide to Cultivated Plants CAB International Wallingford 2008 27 1845933567 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YvU1XnUVxFQC&lpg=PT39&dq=apple%20cultivars%207%2C500&pg=PT39#v=onepage&q=&f=false Different cultivars are available for temperate and subtropical climates. One large collection of over 2100 "National Fruit Collections at Brogdale", Farm Advisory Services Team, accessed 2009-10-27 apple cultivars is housed at the National Fruit Collection in England. Most of these cultivars are bred for eating fresh (dessert apples), though some are cultivated specifically for cooking (cooking apples) or producing cider. Cider apples are typically too tart and astringent to eat fresh, but they give the beverage a rich flavour that dessert apples cannot. http://casfs.ucsc.edu/publications/news%20and%20notes/Fall_06_N&N.pdf Autumn Apple Musings dmy 24 January 2008 pdf 1–2 Sue Tarjan News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden, Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems fall 2006 Commercially popular apple cultivars are soft but crisp. Other desired qualities in modern commercial apple breeding are a colourful skin, absence of russeting, ease of shipping, lengthy storage ability, high yields, disease resistance, typical "Red Delicious" apple shape, long stem (to allow pesticides to penetrate the top of the fruit)March 2009, and popular flavour. http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o523-apple.php Apple - Malus domestica dmy 22 January 2008 Natural England Modern apples are generally sweeter than older cultivars, as popular tastes in apples have varied over time. Most North Americans and Europeans favour sweet, subacid apples, but tart apples have a strong minority following. Extremely sweet apples with barely any acid flavour are popular in Asia http://www.fas.usda.gov/htp2/circular/1998/98-03/applefea.html World apple situation dmy 24 January 2008 and especially India. Old cultivars are often oddly shaped, russeted, and have a variety of textures and colours. Some find them to have a better flavour than modern cultivators, but may have other problems which make them commercially unviable, such as low yield, liability to disease, or poor tolerance for storage or transport. A few old cultivars are still produced on a large scale, but many have been kept alive by home gardeners and farmers that sell directly to local markets. Many unusual and locally important cultivars with their own unique taste and appearance exist; apple conservation campaigns have sprung up around the world to preserve such local cultivars from extinction. In the United Kingdom old cultivars such as Cox's Orange Pippin and Egremont Russet are still commercially important even though by modern standards they are low yielding and disease prone. http://www.uga.edu/fruit/apple.html Origin, History of cultivation 22 J a n u a r y 2008 University of Georgia References