Growing apples. Apple breeding

Like most perennial fruits, apples ordinarily propagate asexually by grafting. Seedling apples are different from their parents, sometimes radically. Most new apple cultivars originate as seedlings, which either arise by chance or are bred by deliberately crossing cultivars with promising characteristics. 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.

Some breeders have crossed ordinary apples with crabapples or unusually hardy apples in order to produce hardier cultivars. For example, the Excelsior Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota has, since the 1930s, introduced a steady progression of important hardy apples that are widely grown, both commercially and by backyard orchardists, throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Its most important introductions have included 'Haralson' (which is the most widely cultivated apple in Minnesota), 'Wealthy', 'Honeygold', and 'Honeycrisp'.

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Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Banana:

Banana is the common name for a fruit and also the herbaceous plants of the genus Musa which produce the commonly eaten fruit - The banana plant is a pseudostem that grows to 6 to 7.6 metres (20-25 feet) tall, growing from a corm - Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple and red - Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries - The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.