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muddy under-color and may finish off somewhat darker. Under similar 

 conditions they tend to develop green flesh which may well persist to 

 time of overmaturity. As a result of excessive fruit spur development, 

 they tend to overset and become biennial. The upright growth character- 

 istic also favors excessive limb or spur rub during the first few crop 

 years. These comments are intended to emphasize some of the less favor- 

 able characteristics of the spur-type strains. They are not intended 

 to discourage planting them. They should certainly have a prominent 

 place in any sizeable planting of Red Delicious. The ideal would be a 

 strain with fruit characteristics of strains such as Topred or Houser 

 combined with the tree growth characteristics of the spur-type. 



"Special consideration is being given to the relative maturity and 

 keeping qualities of the various new budsport strains of Red Delicious. 

 Information on this factor, however, leaves much to be desired. Most 

 of our experimental developments are just now reaching the stage where 

 significant specific data can be obtained. Limited data together with 

 extensive observations indicate rater definite trends. These indica- 

 tions, however, may v\?ell change with more significant data. Informa- 

 tion now available indicates that there is not very much difference in 

 time of relative maturity between the different strains. At this time 

 there would not seem to be more than four or five days difference in 

 time of maturity between strains. This degree of difference is no great- 

 er than that observed for the same strain grown under different condi- 

 tions and on different age trees. In general, all of the spur- type 

 strains appear to be about the same in time of maturity. They all ap- 

 pear to be late in maturing. There are indications that there is a 

 correlation between fruit color pattern and time of maturity. Strains 

 with a solid color pattern such as Houser, Chelan Red and Royal Red 

 appear to mature somewhat later than the striped color pattern strains 

 such as Topred, Red Prince, Red Queen and Red King. This would indicate 

 the desirability of selecting several strains for any sizeable planting 

 of Red Delicious." 



(Editor's Notes: Although our experience with Red Delicious sports is 

 limited, most are too dark in color when grown in New England orchards. 

 We prefer the cherry-red color of Richared. 



At the meeting in Pennsylvania, Dr. C. M. Ritter displayed Red 

 Delicious sports grown on the Pennsylvania State University Horticul- 

 tural farm and discussed in his article quoted above. To the eyes of 

 a New Englander, the majority of sports displayed were either too dark 

 or dark with objectionable stripes. The color of Richared was outstand- 

 ing. 



Professor Edwin Gould mentioned that special consideration is be- 

 ing given to dates of maturity and keeping qualities of the Red Deli- 

 cious sports. Selection of several strains to spread the harvest sea- 

 son of Red Delicious would be advantageous. This is particularly im- 

 portant since we know that watorcore is associated with over-maturity. 

 Based on the incidence of watercore, data obtained at Amherst indicates 

 that Richared matures earlier than Starking.) 



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