Apple varities

Varieties

   Apple varieties should have climatic adaptability, attractive fruit size, shape, colour, good-dessert quality, long shelf-life, resistance to diseases and pest and tolerance to drought conditions besides high productivity. In fifties, the green English varieties- McIntosh, Baldwin, Jonathan, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Golden Delicious, Black Ben Davis and Pippins—predominated. Of late, the coloured Delicious apples have replaced the English ones. As a result of this phenomenal change, Delicious group now occupies more than 83% of the total areas under apple in Himachal Pradesh, 45% in Jammu and Kashmir and 30% in Uttar Pradesh. In Jammu and Kashmir, the area under Ambri has decreased to less than 1% due to late-bearing of this variety, though the fruits are highly attractive with a long shelf-life. The recommended apple varieties in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and hills of Uttar Pradesh are given in Table 1.

Table 1. Recommended varieties of apple in different states

Season	Himachal Pradesh	Jammu and Kashmir	Uttar Pradesh
Early season	TydemanÆs Early (P)	Irish Peach	Early Shanburry (P)
	Michael Molies Delicious	Benoni	Fenny
	Schlomit Starkrimson		Benoni
			Chaubattia Princess
Mid-season	Starking Delicious	American Mother	Red Delicious
	Red Delicious	Razakwar	Starking Delicious
	Richared	Jonathan (P)	McIntosh (P)
	Vance Delicious	Cox's Orange Pippin (P)	Cortland
	Top Red	Red Gold (P)	Golden Delicious (P)
	Lord Lambourne (P)	Queen's Apple
	Red Chief	Rome Beauty
	Oregon Spur	Scarlet Siberian
	Redspur
	Red Gold (P)
Late season	Golden Delicious (P)	King Pippin	Rymer
	Yellow Newton (P)	American Apirouge	Buckingham (P)
	Winter Banana	Kerry Pippin
	Granny Smith (P)	Lal Ambri
		Sunhari Chamure
		Golden Delicious (P)
		Red Delicious
		Ambri Baldwin
		Yellow Newton (P)
		White Dotted Red

        Recently, a further shift from Delicious group to improved spur types and standard colour mutants has been observed. The spur-type mutants produce trees 50–80% of the standard size with 20–50% higher yield potential in addition to early fruit maturity and better fruit colour. The, colour mutants produce standard-sized trees with early and better fruit colouration. Some of the promising high-colouring and early sports of Delicious group identified for cultivation are listed in Table 2.

            Table 2. High-colouring and early–maturing sports of apple

Spur type	Standard colour mutants
Starkrimson	Vance Delicious
Well Spur	Top Red
Redspur	Skyline Supreme
Oregon Spur–II	Hardiman
Red Chief	Bright-n-Early
Miller’s Sturdy Spur
Hardi Spur
Silver Spur

          The high-yielding apple Scarlet Gala and Red Fuzi have also been introduced in Himachal Pradesh and hills of Uttar Pradesh. These are being evaluated on size controlling clonal rootstocks M 9, M 26, M 7, MM 106 and MM 111.

Scab-resistant varieties

        A number of scab-resistant cultivars have been introduced since the incidence of apple scab in epidemic form in 1972–73 in Jammu and Kashmir and 1978–79 in Himachal Pradesh. These introductions include Prima, Priscilla, Sir Prize, Jonafree, Florina, Macfree, Nova Easy Grow, Coop 12, Coop 13 (Redfree), Nova Mac, Liberty and Freedom. Florina, an introduction from France, has shown promising performance in Himachal Pradesh and may become a good substitute for Delicious apples in scab-prone areas. Firdous and Shireen have been released for commercial cultivation as scab-resistant varieties in Jammu and Kashmir.

Hybrids

         Hybridization programme of apple resulted in release of Lal Ambri (Red Delicious × Ambri) and Sunehari (Ambri × Golden Delicious) in Jammu and Kashmir; Chaubattia Princess and Chaubattia Anupam (Early Shanburry × Red Delicious) in Uttar Pradesh hills; and Ambred (Red Delicious × Ambri), Ambrich (Richared × Ambri) and Ambroyal (Starking Delicious × Ambri) in Himachal Pradesh. Ambrich, Ambroyal and Ambred have not gained popularity among the growers of Himachal Pradesh because of very late maturity and extended harvesting period, whereas high-colouring and early-maturing cultivars are preferred.

Low-chilling varieties

       These varieties perform well in areas where winter chilling is less than 800hr below 7°C, insufficient for breaking dormancy of Delicious varieties. Introduction of low-chilling varieties has expanded the scope of apple cultivation to warmer and marginal areas. However, all low-chilling varieties are poor in dessert quality, subacid in taste and have poor shelf-life and as such have a scope for commercialization. Important table-purpose, low-chilling varieties are Michal, Schlomit, Anna, Tamma, Vered and Neomi. Tropical Beauty and Parlin’s Beauty are suitable for processing purposes.

Pollinizing varieties

           The most important feature of a pollinizing variety is that its flowering should synchronize with the main variety. In addition to this, it should have abundant viable pollen, long duration of flowering, compatibility with main variety, self- fruitfulness, regular bearing besides good commercial value. The Delicious group of varieties are self-incompatible and cross-pollinated, whereas most of the English varieties are self-pollinated and act as suitable pollinizers for Delicious group of varieties in the proper proportion of 11–30% in main variety plantation depending on the situation of the orchard. The most suitable pollinizing cultivars are Tydeman’s Early, Red Gold, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, Lord Lambourne, Winter Banana, Granny Smith, Starkspur Golden and Golden Spur. A combination of early, mid-season and late-flowering pollinizers provides assured cross-pollination for the main variety. A combination of Tydeman’s Early, Red Gold and Golden 

Delicious has been recommended in Himachal Pradesh for Starking Delicious plantations. The flowering crabs have also been introduced for cross-pollination and are under evaluation. Some important flowering crab varieties are Red Flush, Crimson Gold, Yellow Drop, Manchurian, Snowdrift, Golden Hornet and Malus floribunda. Redfree and Liberty, resistant to scab, can also be used as pollinizers.