Sunday, May 19, 2013

If you plant an apple seed, the resulting tree will not produce

If you plant an apple seed, the resulting tree will not produce the same kinds of apples. In fact, they will taste significantly different and may be unsuitable for human consumption


“In the wild, apples grow readily from seeds. However, like most perennial fruits, apples are ordinarily propagated asexually by grafting. This is because seedling apples are an example of “”extreme heterozygotes”", in that rather than inheriting DNA from their parents to create a new apple with those characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their parents.[38] Triploid varieties have an additional reproductive barrier in that 3 sets of chromosomes cannot be divided evenly during meiosis, yielding unequal segregation of the chromosomes (aneuploids). Even in the case when a triploid plant can produce a seed (apples are an example), it occurs infrequently, and seedlings rarely survive.[39] Most new apple cultivars originate as seedlings, which either arise by chance or are bred by deliberately crossing cultivars with promising characteristics.[40] The words ‘seedling’, ‘pippin’, and ‘kernel’ in the name of an apple cultivar suggest that it originated as a seedling. Apples can also form bud sports (mutations on a single branch). Some bud sports turn out to be improved strains of the parent cultivar. Some differ sufficiently from the parent tree to be considered new cultivars.[41]

Since the 1930s, the Excelsior Experiment Station at the University of Minnesota has introduced a steady progression of important apples that are widely grown, both commercially and by local orchardists, throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Its most important contributions have included ‘Haralson’ (which is the most widely cultivated apple in Minnesota), ‘Wealthy’, ‘Honeygold’, and ‘Honeycrisp’.

Apples have been acclimatized in Ecuador at very high altitudes, where they provide crops twice per year because of constant temperate conditions year-round.”


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If you plant an apple seed, the resulting tree will not produce

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