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Edwin Gould 

 West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station 

 Kearneysvllle, W, Viginia 



"Current trends in the apple industry emphasize the importance of 

 varieties. They are one of the basic essentials for success. The deci- 

 sion as to which varieties to plant is a very difficult one to make. It 

 is not so difficult, however, to know which varieties are most profitable 

 at any given time. The problem of special concern is in predicting fu- 

 ture demands. There has been a significant trend towards fewer and fewer 

 varieties in most commercial orchards throughout this country. This has 

 resulted primarily from the pressure of distributor demand. In West Vir- 

 ginia most new developments now consider only about three m.iin varieties; 

 Red and Golden Delicious and Yorks. Of these three varietii's only the 

 Red Delicious is consistently dependable for the fresh market. 



"The Red Delicious is rapidly becoming the most popular variety of 

 apples grown in West Virginia. There has been a significant increase 

 in plantings of Delicious in all new developments considered for the 

 fresh market. There are a number of factors responsible for this sig- 

 nificant trend. It is by far the most popular variety grown in this 

 country today. It is a premium variety in most markets. The recent 

 discovery of many very promising new budsport strains of Delicious has 

 been another important factor. There is much concern that it may already 

 be overplanted. This may well be true but the continued heavy plantings 

 in all areas where it can be grown emphasizes the general belief that 

 there will never be an overproduction of good, well-colored Red Delicious 

 until there is an overproduction of apples for the fresh market. An 

 overproduction of Red Delicious, however, would tend to adjust itself 

 rather quickly because there is little demand for it by the processing 

 industry. 



"The recent discovery and the development of a large series of very 

 impressive new budsport strains of Red Delicious indicates an even more 

 promising future for this already popular variety. The first important 

 series of budsport mutations of Red Delicious was discovered more than a 

 half -century ago. Several of these became established and have been an 

 important factor in developing the Delicious variety to its present pop- 

 ularity. The first of a new series of budsport strains was discovered 

 about twelve years ago. Since then a large number of very promising 

 strains have been discovered and brought under commercial development. 

 In the first series of mutations the main factor of concern was the time 

 and intensity of fruit color formation. In the latest series, however, 

 there are two dominant factors of consideration. In addition to the 

 fruit color formation there is a very interesting and highly important 

 semi-dwarf spur-type tree growth characteristic factor in many of the 

 new mutations. The combination of the two factors emphasizes the im- 

 portance of these new strains. 



"We now have more than seventy of these new budsport strains of 

 Red Delicious under evaluation. Some of these have been under develop- 

 ment for several yeaz^s while still others are just being introduced. 

 Approximately one-third of the new selections are semi-dwarf spur-type 



