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Welcome to the urban forestry radio show brought to you by the community orchard network. In podcast, I'm going to take you on a journey. We'll learn about fruit trees, permaculture, food, forests, So if you're a gardener and enjoy growing your own food, if you love trees and especially fruit trees, or if you're just interested in living a more sustainable life, you've come to the right place.
I'm Susan Poizner, your host for today. So get ready, roll up your sleeves, and let's dig in to today's episode.
Good evening and welcome to the Urban Forestry Radio Show with your host Susan Poizner right here on Reality Radio. 1 0 1 to contact Susan live right now in the studio this afternoon. Email her instudio101@gmail.com
and now write to your host of the Urban Forestry Radio Show. Susan Poizner. Hi everyone, and welcome to the show today. I would love to know, what is your favourite apple? Is it a Macintosh? Maybe you like Granny Smith, or maybe you like Ambrosia. So throughout the show today, I'd love to hear from you about the apples that you like best and what you like about them.
That's because we're going to be talking about developing apple cultivars. So the question is, how do you develop an apple tree that produces amazing tasting fruit? And by the way, today we are not talking about genetic modification. That's a topic for another show. Today we're talking about conventional breeding programs.
We'll learn a little bit more about what that is later in the show. So my first guest, he got lucky. He's Rob Wyles, a farmer from central Washington, who discovered a beautiful new apple variety by accident. One day, when he was working in his orchard, he spotted round and perfectly red apples growing on what should have been a gala apple tree.
it was clear that these were not gala apples. He'll tell us the story about how he realized he had discovered a new cultivar that he hopes will make a splash in the apple world. In the second part of the show, I'll speak to a scientist who's taking a different approach. Daryl Somers of the Vineland Research and Innovation Center will talk to me about the science behind taste and apple breeding.
He'll explain how he is using existing DNA based technology to predict if apple seedlings in his conventional breeding program will produce high quality apples long before the seedlings have ever even developed a fruit to taste. So throughout the show, I welcome your questions, your comments, and your thoughts about what your favorite apple is and why you like it.
Send us an email live to instudio101 at gmail. com, and I'll read your comment later in the show. But first Let's talk about foxtrot apples. So I have Rob Wyles from Tieton, Washington on the line. He discovered the apple tree that he calls foxtrot. Rob, welcome to the show. Thank you, Susan. Thanks so much for coming on.
Can you tell me the story? How is it that you discovered the foxtrot apple tree? getting close to harvest in August, I was walking through an orchard in Quincy, Washington that I own. And I noticed the fruit on a particular tree was extremely red and beautiful and was elongated with a nice calyx in.
And I thought this was strange because it was a gala orchard. So we cut the fruit open, the meat was white, the seeds were turning brown, and we decided to flag it off and keep everybody from cutting on it for a year to see if it duplicated itself for the following year. The following year, the tree did the exact same thing.
So that spring, or that winter, we collected wood and grafted our first trees, which were 20 in three different spots, to see if that second generation was the same as the first generation. that first, the first time you discovered the tree. So you saw that these apples were pure red. Now, Gala apples, what do they look like?
a Gala apple is more round and they're bicolored. the state of Washington has tried to come up with high colored fruit because the consumer likes intensity of color and sometimes do not buy fruit by the taste. And as a farmer, I want the fruit to be. Extremely colorful and good taste. So what did it, what did this apple taste like?
You must have wanted to take a bite that first time that you saw this beautiful red, apple on your tree. What did it taste like to you? it was high bricks. I knew it was high bricks. I did not have a refractometer on me at the time that measures sugar, and it was really crispy, and it was getting close to being ripe.
So you say high bricks, so I would say it was sweet. Was it a sweet apple, if I were to try? Very sweet. And it's interesting because Gala, the tree that it was growing on, is a sweet apple as well. Would you say that it tasted like a Gala apple? It tastes similar to a Gala. The bricks are one to two bricks higher.
And pressures are a little higher than your normal gala apple. It's And then the color was intense red. It's funny because when we spoke previously, you mentioned to me that you looked at it and you thought, this looks more like a Christmas tree with Christmas ornaments than a, an apple tree.
Is that true? Correct. Yeah. That was my first indication is that I've walked upon a Christmas tree with Ornaments on it. That's what it looked like. is this magic? How could it possibly be that you have an orchard filled with Gala apple trees all the same, and on one tree planted that was originally a Gala apple tree, how would it then turn into something totally different?
Mother Nature tends to mutate certain varieties of apples, and more so than others. my best guess would be the tree was planted, It was probably four feet tall when it was planted. We cut it off at 36 inches, and when we cut it off at 36 inches, it woke a bud up called a latent bud, which is a bud way deep into the tissue that could be the same variety or something a little different.
So with that hard heading cut, it woke up a bud. And then that bud turned out to be a tree, which was a one whip, and then we trained it up the wires. Amazing. any, we all prune fruit trees regularly. We prune them every year. It's pretty predictable. you prune your tree, and usually you keep getting the same kind of the same variety of apple.
it's a golden delicious. You'll keep getting golden delicious. So would you call that bud some sort of mutant bud? Absolutely. It's mutated from the parent plant. That's, I wonder how often that happened. Has that ever happened to you before? we have seen minimal differences in our fruit after pruning in the next season.
But this was so different that anybody that saw it knew that it was totally different. It did look like Christmas ornaments on a Christmas tree. I mean it was, it would be obvious to the naive eye that Something was happening here. Okay, so now you've got you, you planted it out. This is year two, you've planted some trees.
Where did it go from there? Did you get friends to taste it? Did you show it to people? What, happened next? what we did is we wanted to go three and four generations out. So we kept getting, fruit wood off second generations, third generation, then fourth generations, which takes about three years to prove it out.
In the meantime, my wife and I would have dinner parties at our house and we would have Foxtrot teeny night. So we would make martinis with Foxtrot and then cut the Foxtrot up with cheese and crackers and just serve it as an hors d'oeuvre. And we thought we were being hilarious and having a good time doing it.
And people would come in and say, Wow, this is incredible. why don't you think about doing something with this? And over a lot of years, it started in 2006 or 7, it just gained momentum. Amazing. So when did you finally realize that this could be actually a business opportunity for you? We are into our second year of growing trees commercially for sale.
so it would have been two years ago, but prior to that we had to buy the rootstock, get a licensed nursery to either bud it or graft it. grafting takes a year to deliver a tree. Budding takes two years, so there's some amount of time involved. four years ago is when we started contacting nurseries.
to grow the fruit. We have had a few nurseries on board since 2008, look at the apple and they come and look at it two or three times every year and just so they have the confidence in it and they know that it's something that looks good and eats good and is saleable. Now, did you have to go somehow and prove that this is not an existing apple, that this doesn't, hasn't existed yet in the world?
Did you have to even patent the tree? yes. So I hired a patent attorney that works specifically on plant material. her name's Michelle Boss and she was with me two or three years during bloom, during thinning, during harvest. So she was taking photos, doing all the measurements and we were applying for a U.
S. patent as Foxtrot being the patent name. And where'd you get the name from? we thought it was catchy. there's a Foxtrot dance and we thought the younger people would think Foxtrot might be something that people my age wasn't. We just thought the name was catchy. So my wife, Michelle and I, that's what we named it was Foxtrot.
I know that, afterwards you were to go on a bit of an adventure, and you're still on the adventure of learning how to market the tree. I would love to chat with you about that, but we have to have just a couple of minutes of commercials. can you hold on the line, Rob, for just a minute? And in the meantime, I'll ask any listeners, if they have questions for Rob, or if they want to send us any comments, they can email us live at InStudio101.
You're listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show on Reality Radio 101. I'm Susan Poizner and we'll be back after this short break. Hi everyone, it's Susan Poizner from
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Welcome back to the Urban Forestry Radio Show with your host Susan Poizner, right here on Reality Radio 101. To contact Susan live right now, send her an email instudio101 at gmail. com And now right back to your host Susan Poizner. You're listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show on Reality Radio 101.
I'm Susan Poizner, and in today's show we're talking about discover, discovering new apple cultivars. My first guest today is Rob Wyles, a farmer who discovered and is now marketing the new Foxtrot apple, which he found on a rogue tree in his orchard in central Washington. Now, I haven't tasted Foxtrot myself yet, but I've seen pictures, and it's very pretty.
It's a beautiful red apple, and it looks more like a Christmas ornament than a piece of fruit. Rob, let's talk a little bit. about marketing. You've got this really interesting tree. You're producing it. But how do you actually get it to customers? What's the process like? we tried word of mouth and there are club varieties and it takes quite a bit of horsepower to get a club certified.
And to get markets to accept that variety. So what I'm trying to do is bring it to the growers and let the growers do what they want to do with it at the warehouse. Currently, some of it is being sold as gala. And we're just up in the air how we're going to market this apple because of expenses. So what is involved?
people need to, for instance, here I am in Canada, and if I wanted to plant a foxtrot apple, could I get an apple tree shipped to me somehow? Or is the challenge really getting people to know about it, or is it more getting it out there? all of the above. Those are good points. Getting people to know the fruit.
The trees can be shipped to Canada. We're working on other export markets as we speak. It's just getting people to understand that it's really a good apple that looks really good. We grow about 140 million boxes of apples in the state of Washington, and some of them don't taste so good, so they're more like a staple as an apple.
I would like to see this Apple be successful because it's absolutely. delicious to eat. It crunches every time you bite into it, and it's really terrific looking, and I think it'd be terrific for any apple industry to represent an apple like this. It's funny, I don't know if you know this, but the Macintosh apple was discovered here in Ontario, in my province.
200 years ago, by someone just like you. He was a farmer and he found the tree. It was like a wild tree, I think, planted from seed somehow. And, it took him a while to learn how to propagate, the, actual tree. But funnily enough, the, Macintosh, only became famous. After he was long gone.
it was his kids that ended up getting it out there. And in those days, they didn't have social media. I don't know if they had radio shows to talk about these things. So have you heard examples of other people who get their fruit into the market in a more accelerated way? most of it is group activity where you go to a specific marketing company that might market.
Like 10 percent of the state fruit, they buy onto it and decide that they'll market, it under a club variety that is highly regulated. Okay, so basically it's a big marketing company. It's that or nothing, basically, these days. It's basically that or nothing. Wow. Wow. So for those of us who are out there trying to make our fortunes and by discovering new kinds of fruit, this may be a bigger challenge than we think?
It's a large challenge, but it can be met. we have a big egg exposition going on in December, and that'll bring people in all over the world so they can see the fruit, and that might generate some excitement. I have talked to a couple big marketing companies that already have these club varieties.
They are interested. it's just gonna take some time, I've been doing this since 2007, so it's a long term project. yeah, but worth it, right? Do you think it's worth it for you? Oh, of course. I love farming. I love to bring great produce to consumers. I've done that for 41 years, Susan.
Wow. Wow. And it's exciting to bring something new to people. And I, totally, agree with you and I feel you on that. It's like we go to the supermarkets and we see the same. stuff and it's all good. Like I love the stuff in the supermarket, but I see in the fruit tree nurseries that there is so much more to choose from that we don't get access to.
And there are a lot of people who find that very exciting that there are different flavors. There's so much even just within the apple world. for those of us who like to adventure and try new things. It's really exciting. So I know that there might be a listener out there who, who wants, would love to, to get a seedling tree from you.
how, what, would you suggest? Can they reach out to you directly? yeah, they can reach out to me directly. And then I've got about a dozen nurseries that are now starting to grow. And are growing the Foxtrot tree, and there's a periodical called the good fruit grower, and it's published in Yakima Washington, and there was an introductory article on Foxtrot about six months ago.
And now we've, this is our second ad for Foxtrot in that magazine. And. I can email you or text you or shoot a picture of it and send it to you so you know who to call and which nurseries do grow this variety. That would be terrific because after the show we'll do a little blog and we'll put the show online and any links that you want me to put I can put on there so if people want to find you they can.
Actually, Rob, we got a really nice email from a listener, Carmen. I'm not sure where Carmen is, but she says, Hi, Susan. Wow. What a show, a new discovery and big congratulations to Rob. So that is really nice. Thank you, Carmen, for that email. So appreciate that. And Rob, it's been so wonderful to talk to you.
I wish I could come over to one of your dinner parties and have the apple and cheese and taste it. See what it all tastes like. Maybe one day. That'd be terrific. good luck with it all. in the second half of the show, we're going to talk about a different way of developing new apple varieties. But in the meantime, thanks for coming on, and I hope to hear from you again soon.
Okay. Thanks, Susan, and I will send you some more information. so much, Rob. Okay. Have a terrific afternoon. You too. That was Rob Wyles of Tieton, Washington who has discovered and is marketing a new apple called Foxtrot. Now Rob was lucky to discover this beautiful new apple cultivar by chance but most cultivars are developed in conventional breeding programs.
The scientists involved in these programs want to develop an apple that the public will just love but How do you evaluate what people love so you know what you're shooting for? We'll find out in just a few minutes. You're listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show on Reality Radio 101. I'm Susan Poizner.
And we'll be back after this short break. Kelly's raising her son. His dad left his dad. Did
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Where am I? There are birds, bees, and fruit trees, and I'm in the middle of a big city. You are in Philadelphia. Our city is growing more beautiful each year thanks to the Philadelphia Orchard Project. We plant fruit trees, berry bushes, and other edibles in city parks, gardens, and other public places. I can see that.
Raspberry canes, fig trees, and peaches. If I lived nearby, I would never go hungry. That's one of our goals. We want to help communities grow their own food by teaching residents how to plant fruit trees and care for them. We focus on the neighborhoods that need it most. It sounds like a great project. How can I help?
How can I learn more? Please visit our website at phillyorchards. org to volunteer or donate. And you can also follow our Urban Orchard blog. phillyorchards. org I will definitely check it out. Thanks so much, and have a great day. This message was brought to you by the Philadelphia Orchard Project.
Welcome back to the Urban Forestry Radio Show with your host, Susan Poizner, right here on Reality Radio 101. To contact Susan live right now in the studio, send her an email. In Studio 101. At gmail.com.
And now right back to your host, Susan Boisner. I'm Susan Boisner and you're listening to the Urban Forestry Radio Show, a program where we learn about food, trees, food, forest, permaculture, abor culture, and lots more. Thanks for tuning in. Earlier in the show, we talked to a farmer who discovered a new apple cultivar by chance, the result of a genetic mutation on one of the thousands of trees that he has in his orchard.
He knew it tasted good because he took a bite of the apple and he liked it. But Rob Wyles isn't alone in his quest to find the next great apple that will appeal to both consumers and to growers. And frankly, it can take a long time to develop an apple tree that will take the world by storm, like Macintosh, Gala, or Fuji.
But a group of researchers in Ontario, in Canada, is trying to accelerate this process by using science and genetics. My next guest, Daryl Somers of the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Ontario, is using existing DNA based technology. to predict if apple seedlings in his conventional breeding program will produce high quality apples.
And he'll know if the apples taste good even before those seedling trees have ever produced any fruit. in a moment, we'll have Daryl on the line. And as you listen to the interview today, we'd love to hear your questions and comments. Send us an email at instudio101 at gmail. com. Hi, Darryl. Thanks for joining me today.
Hi, Susan. Darryl, did you hear the interview with Rob earlier in the show? Yeah, really interesting. I've heard, similar stories to what Rob was talking about, people, finding new, apples like that. is that the way of the future, or is that going the way of the dodo? is it, are we not going to be finding fruit trees and, in that natural way anymore?
No, I think what's going on with on Rob's farm is natural. I think it has a place in the development of varieties. In fact, there are a number of varieties currently in the marketplace, which are exactly what Rob's describing there. Mutants or what we call sports from trees. I think a really good example is the ambrosia apple is exactly that.
It's a mutation and was never through a breeding program. But the breeding programs, of course, play a role as well. Okay, so what exactly are you doing in your program? And I understand we're talking about a conventional breeding program, and this isn't genetically modifying, somehow. Can you just specify what kind of program is it that you work on?
so at the Vineland Research and Innovation Center in 2011, we started a brand new apple breeding program from scratch, right from the very beginning. And in Canada, we have, apple breeding going on in British Columbia with Agriculture Canada and, some apple genetics and breeding was also taking place, in Kentville, Nova Scotia.
So here in Ontario, we started this program, partnered with the Ontario apple growers and we put some other public funding underneath the program and we began making crosses or hybridizations. In, in 2011 and started to develop, a very large, orchard of individual trees. So every tree in our orchard is derived from a single seed harvested from, many apples that we've, produced.
And currently we, this year in 2016, we've just exceeded 20, 000. New apple trees are now within our orchard. Every single tree is different. And now we have the big job, of course, of going through those trees with some instrumentation, but also with just human taste and determine which of the apples we'd like to advance to the next steps.
Okay, so before you had access to the DNA based technology. And I'm not talking about this orchard. But in the older days, quite recent older days, how did people discover, you've got thousands of trees, each one is totally an individual planted from an individual seed? How Long would it take? And how, what was the process of finding the great tasting apples that you wanted to then propagate and bring out into the world?
if you go back a few decades, it certainly would take 15 to 20, even 25 years, to, really discover an apple. when I think about Rob talking about Gala, Gala is actually from the 1930s. It's a very, it's actually quite an old apple. And it was originally crossed, 70, 80 years ago, and it really is popular in the marketplace now, but people don't often understand exactly how old an apple is.
conventional breeders, over the, decades ago, certainly would take the time to walk through their orchard and, literally biting into hundreds of apples a day. Over the harvest season, looking for that next great, great taste experience. And it's but it goes beyond taste. Of course, the farmers have a number of traits they're interested in, such as how does it yield?
is it adapted to the environment? How big does the tree get? All sorts of things. Pest and disease resistance. Of course, there's lots of farmer traits which are important as well. So that okay, so then it could take, like you said, 15 years to develop a tree. Now you find you found a way to test these seedlings even before they produce fruit to decide if the fruit is going to be tasty.
How does that work? And out of a thousand trees, would you get a thousand yummy different apples? Or would you get maybe three yummy apples? Good question. So what we're really leveraging and what we're relying on is a lot of scientific literature over the last, say, 10 or 12 years, and particularly some very nice research coming out of Cornell University or Washington State University near Rob.
and Minnesota and Michigan, these places, and nice research, which really demonstrates that there are certain genes within the apple, which control some of these traits that we're very interested in, such as how crisp or firm an apple is, whether you have acid or, high acid or low acid. And importantly, people don't think about this, but it's the storage properties of an apple.
So there are certain genes within the apple that we, are very clear about their role, and which can influence how well an apple will store through the winter. It's those particular, genes that we now have, diagnostic tests. It's not just me. Many apple programs around the world have these. And we have a diagnostic test then which would predict, whether an apple would be, really good for storage or not good for storage.
So back to your orchard. So let's say you have a thousand trees. I know you have more than that, but you have a thousand trees. You use these tests, and you discover that out of the thousand trees, 10 will have tasty fruit. Are you going to dig up the remaining trees, throw them away and plant 1000 more seeds to take their place?
How does that work? Yeah, that's exactly correct. I would expect if I take it up to the full scale, which is 20, 000 trees, I would expect we might advance 1%. So maybe 200 trees out of that and the other 19, 800 trees will be cut down and thrown in a burn pile. because they really are, poor quality.
So they're, really not that useful to us. Unless you find something really strangely unique, like some novel disease resistance, might be interesting to keep, even though the apple itself didn't taste very well, it might be interesting, other reasons to keep a tree, but it would be kept for breeding purposes, not for commercialization.
okay. and I just want to remind people again that these trees that you're digging up, you haven't even given them the chance to produce the fruit. You found out genetically that the fruit, or for whatever reason, this tree is not appropriate. the remaining trees that you're keeping, you are saying that somehow you know that the fruit will be quote unquote tasty.
you know I may like, Novamac apples, I may like, Granny Smith, and you may not. How can a genetic marker tell, tell you that you've, got an apple growing on this, that will grow on this tree, that will please both me and you and somebody else? okay, good. So just one quick point of clarity.
We actually do the selection with DNA fingerprinting before we ever plant the trees in the orchard. That's done on a very small six inch high seedling, and it's from there we decide what to plant in the orchard. The effect of that is you enrich the orchard for trees which have a higher probability of, having that good taste we're looking for.
so to your second question, how do we, where do we start? So what we did here in Vineland was we actually, working with our Consumer Insights Group, led by Dr. Amy Bowen, we tasted, 70 or 80 different apples, some of which were Heritage in nature, and many of them, of course, were cultivated varieties.
And what we learned from that was what are consumers looking for, and why do consumers, like certain apples, and then more specifically, what were the sensory properties, underlying, that consumer preference. And we use an actual trained Human sensory panel. So we're a bit unique that way. It's not just the Vineland employees, but it's actually a trained human sensory panel.
And it taught us a lot about texture and the level of acid and the bricks and all these kinds of things that we're looking for. for me, when you say that, I'd say to myself, you just want a super sweet apple that's crunchy. I personally like Apples that are a mix that I like tart apples, for the public, if you look, if you go to the supermarket, mostly you get sweet apples that are crunchy.
Most of that, that's true. They're the texture and the crunchiness is a major driver on a person's decision to choose one apple over another. And you're right. Most apples are sweet. I think from our research, we are, Amy was also able to point out that about 89 percent of consumers prefer that fresh, red, crunchy apple and about 11 percent would then go towards the granny smith, the green tart types of apples.
so as a, plant breeder. that helps me decide, okay, I think we really should target the large, larger market space. but you might find some nice yellows and green apples along the way. Oh, wow. okay, so using this technology and the research, you are only, your whole orchard is all trees that you know produces, they will produce some sort of tasty apple.
It'll have some beneficial qualities, maybe disease resistance or something like that. What happens in the fall when these apples are producing, when these trees are producing? So this year, 2016, so I think, first of all, as I say, we started in 2011. So this was the first year we actually had a substantial number of trees, with fruit.
We had about 300, individual trees. So I was curious, of course, what they Taste so we did harvest the 300 apples, regardless of what they looked like. I wanted to just check on the diversity that was out there, and so we brought them all in and just a handful of my staff. We went through for about two weeks, tasted all 300 apples and collected a lot of interesting information, which I haven't quite digested yet.
And within those 300, I would estimate we'd be interested in advancing, maybe 10 of those. onto a, second stage. So will you dig out the other ones or are you just gonna let them be for another few years? No, I'll certainly, among the 300 we tasted, there were, there were 250, which I would absolutely cut down.
they were really not good . And despite all the testing there's no sense keeping them. The farm crew's gonna have to look after them. I don't want them to, waste our time on that. was the percentage higher than if you had randomly planted seeds, and then, you're still going to be throwing out 250?
Varieties, essentially. So did, you get a better percentage of good quality apples using this technology? has it proven itself? It hasn't proven itself yet because, again, just to point of clarity, the first sets of apples that we've just tasted did not go through my DNA lab. It was just too early in the program.
But the next sets, we've, out of the 20, 000 trees, on the farm, I would estimate 16, 000 have gone through the DNA lab. So that's still a couple of years away to see whether we've really enriched the farm for what we're looking for. And of course, having I've already tasted, what I would call, unselected apples.
now I have a, now I have a baseline, and I can look a couple of years from now, I'll be able to check back against this baseline. how improved is the orchard because of the DNA fingerprinting? You guys, you're part of a research institution. You, are doing this for research. Can this be applied somehow, or is it being applied in the commercial world?
Are there, fruit tree developing companies that will want to use this technology or if somebody like Rob called you up and said, Hey, can you do the test? And on a tree that I found, who would you work for essentially? Vineland is more than just a research institute. We are a commercial, we're a not for profit institute, but we do commercialize all of our research and very stakeholder driven.
That's why the apple growers are, funding the work. So we certainly have commercial intentions coming out of the breeding program. Our breeding program is not the only one in the world using this technology. It's, used in all the major apple breeding programs and fruit breeding programs around the world.
It's also, of course, applied in across many, different vegetable crops and other grains and oilseeds. So it's nothing really new, and if people are interested in having apples tested, it's, Be a little unusual for us to, to do service work of that nature, but, it is possible to contact companies that can do that kind of work.
And so who do you work for? Is there any big companies that you have done this work for, or is that a future thing? on the Apple side, no, we've done No particular work for any private companies or other breeding programs at this point. I've had some collaborations, for example, with a colleague at, out of Kentville, Nova Scotia, with Agriculture Canada, and another colleague down there, Sean Miles at Dalhousie University, who was interested in, in, Fingerprinting about 1000 trees that he has access to.
So we've done some work that way, personally speaking. how long have you been working, with apples in particular? Has this been a long time thing for you? for me, no, just since 2010, 2011. And before that, what were you up to? Oh, I've always been a research scientist in agriculture, for about 20 years now.
And, and I worked for the federal government working with canola and wheat. But in, in 2008, I moved over to vineland and we are, purely a horticulture research institute. I'm basically applying, my experiences and my knowledge from previous crops, basically applying them to apples.
Between me and you and the listeners out there, it must be more fun to work with apples. you get to taste them and, is it something you're enjoying? Yeah, certainly, it's very different, I used to work in annual crops like I would get new crops if it was wheat, for example, you plant in the spring and you harvest in the fall and you on and on with apples, you really don't see the final product until really 15 years out.
So what I'm sad about is I'll retire before we actually release a variety out of the program, but I'm super excited about working on apples and being able to. set this up, set this program up for whoever may, come in the, come into the position behind me. It is amazing what, even with new technology, that it is such a long process, to develop, to test the trees, to find the right ones.
is it worth it? Oh, definitely. I think, the technology of DNA fingerprinting, it allows you to, increase your chances of success. You might go a little bit faster, but you still need to test the trees. As Rob was saying, you've got to get the trees out onto the farm. This is what takes the time.
It has to be tested on our farm, at least through two different cycles, and it has to go to the farmers, and they need to test it and see it. And finally, it gets in the hands of nurseries and marketers. So that's why it takes forever. just one other question that comes to mind, and I think some of the listeners might be thinking this too.
Would it be faster? I'm not saying right or wrong. I wonder what your opinion is. With genetic modification, you just take the qualities you want, you've got the DNA, just create a franken tree with all the, everything you want in one tree and maybe it would be fast and quick and boom, you get your fancy new variety.
Yeah, No, it's definitely faster if you'd used a transgenic approach as they've done with the arctic apple and the non browning traits. The trick, in that approach is you need to have particular genes in mind, that you know that when you change the gene, within the apple, that it, you can anticipate the, the desired effect.
so it's certainly faster, for example, if you want to take a Gala or a Granny Smith and just turn it into a non browning apple, it could be done quite quickly. And then, get to market much faster than 15 years. Oh, is that what the Arctic Apple was? That they took an existing variety and just tweaked a few things about it?
Yeah, in that case, you can check out the website for that. It's, essentially at this point they have a Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and a Gala. And even Fuji now, which they've converted into, basically introduced this non browning trait into those particular apples. So they just changed one thing.
So if you are, like Dr. Frankenstein, creating your, and that's negative, but I'm not making any statement either way, but if you're creating a whole new tree and you want to bring a flavor in from here and a flavor in from there, That may be a bigger process and it may not work, right? If you were really wanting to tweak flavor and bring in Like I'll give you a funny example I was tasting apples a few weeks ago and I got this very strong licorice taste like a black licorice taste it's a chemical, something like a nice yummy.
So so if you understood the genes which actually controlled those particular, chemicals and volatiles in the apple, you could imagine, introducing that flavor, more quickly into an already established variety. But tweaking flavor would be rather complicated. anything's possible.
It's, my father actually loves apples. He's, he really enjoys a good apple, and he came home one day with these apples. He says, I found these apples, and they're grape apples. they must have done something. They taste like grapes. They're delicious. Yeah. And, I think that this is not genetic modification.
I think they just infused the apple with, some artificial grape flavor or something. Have you heard of these? Yeah, that's right. I've never tasted it, but it's called the grapple, and it is an infusion of grape flavor into an apple. Yeah, somehow that ruins the fun, knowing that you can take your own, I don't know, grape juice and pour it on top of your apple and do the same thing.
But, and do you have a favorite apple that's interesting? Or, what would you say your favorite apple would be? the first time I tasted Honeycrisp, I really fell in love with that. And I think many people in the, In the community of breeders that I hang around with or, in the apple industry would place Honeycrisp, really, it sets the bar for texture.
It's a very unique, mouthfeel and texture. Of course, it's sweet. It's very white on the inside. I certainly love Honeycrisp. I always reach for it when I go to the, when I go to the store. even though there's 10 other apples there, it's, Absolutely worth it. Honeycrisp is hard to grow though, if you're growing it in your own backyard.
Yeah, it's got some production issues. I'm not really an expert in that area, but I have a lot of faith in the farmers in Ontario and across Canada. They can sort out, sometimes these things take, just take a lot of time until people really tweak it on their own farm and how to irrigate and how to manage the trees and then really get the best quality out of it.
Yeah, some of them are trickier than others. So a lot of the people that I work with, they, I try and set them up with the tree that's disease resistant. and easier to grow organically, especially. But these are home growers or community growers, and, and there is so many, there are so many interesting flavours out there, for people to try.
They may not be necessarily great on the market because maybe they don't travel well or don't look perfect, but, it's amazing what selection is out there for those of us who want to grow fruit trees. Yeah, that's exactly, that's part of the reason why we're into this breeding program is it's, I think I could make this comment about horticulture in general.
It's a bit of a fashion industry where consumers are always looking for the next thing, whether that's an apple or a new flower or a new type style of tomato or whatever it might be. And I think that's true in Apple. even though it might seem like busy space, in the marketplace, and I can understand what Rob's going through trying to bring a new Apple to market, it's not simple.
But I do believe that the market is always willing to take on, new products. I think people, you can retire some of the older products. And consumers will look for the next best thing. That sounds so, it's so exciting. you're not too far from where I am. Maybe one day I'll get a chance in the autumn to walk through the orchard you guys have and taste some of those cool new apples.
I would love to do that one day. Yeah, you're welcome to visit any time. Thank you. thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really learned a lot and it clarified a lot of questions that I had. I so appreciate you coming on the show. Okay, thanks for the, thanks for the time. Okay, you take care.
Take care. Bye. Bye bye. That was Daryl Somers of Vineland Innovation and Research Centre in Vineland, Ontario. The Urban Forestry Radio Show is almost over for this month, so I would like to thank both of my special guests. Rob Wyles, who discovered the foxtrot apple. I hope we'll see that soon in shops near us, wherever we live.
And Daryl Somers of Vineland Innovation and Research Centre here in Ontario. We have lots more great interviews coming up next month, so be sure to tune in again. The Urban Forestry Radio Show runs on the last Tuesday of every month. At 1 p. m. Eastern on RealityRadio101. com. Now if you want to listen to the podcast or you want to listen to this show from the beginning, you can just go to OrchardPeople.
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