Customised apples for consumers and producers? 30.000 seedlings for one apple? Forschungsanstalt Agroscope breeds new apple varieties, and pears and apricots, too.

It takes up to 20 year to breed a new apple variety.

There are various expectations to fulfil. Consumers want a crunchy, juicy, aromatic apple with a long shelf life; producers want good and regular yields and an apple that is disease and pest-resistant.

Breeding is a demanding, incremental process:

• Definition of forward-looking, promising breeding targets (hybridisation parents) 
  
• Pollination of 10.000 flowers of the mother variety with the father variety's pollen p.a. 
  
• Removal of about 10.000 apple seeds from the hybridisation fruits in autumn 
  
• Sowing the removed seeds in spring; in theory, every seed is a new variety 
  
• Strict selection of the new fruits by disease suspectibility, growth properties and fruit quality in the course of a number of years 
  
• Storage tests, consumer and sales tests to evaluate its market potential
  

After 15 to 20 years, one out of approx. 30.000 seedlings crosses the finishing line and is baptised as a new variety. To identify genetic properties, Agroscope uses state-of-the-art molecular methods. No genetic transfer is made. 

Old varieties are also used, since they often have valuable properties in the field of disease resistance, colour or taste nuances. 

For more information, please visit www.agroscope.ch.

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