North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Bernie Nikolai <Nikolai@v-wave.com>]

Living where I do in central Alberta and unable to grow 98% of the apples
ever mentioned on this list (as they die in the winter), I've researched the
same topic.  I spoke at length via email and phone with hardiness experts
from many government organizations and universities.  I thought that perhaps
they can "inject" a cold hardiness gene from a Siberian Crab into a
McIntosh, and bingo, a McIntosh that laughs at -50F.  The apple breeders at
Cornell were the most helpful in helping me understand.  Unfortunately there
is no single "cold hardiness gene".  It just doesn't exist.  Cold hardiness
is a very, very complex sequence of genes that apparently has yet to be
discovered and understood.  An when/if it ever is, the sequence will
probably be extraordinarily difficult to transport to another plant.  So we
are a long, long way from doing this, to my disappointment.

In terms of apples, the very hardy ones I grow apparantly have the ability
to shed much of the water from the cells during very cold weather, say -40C,
and then rehydrate themselves when it warms up without damage.  The lesser
hardy apples, say a Golden Delicious, can't rid themselves of the same
amount of water in the cells.  The water in the cells freezes, and the sharp
edges of the ice crystals rupture the cells, killing the plant.  This is an
oversimplified explanation, I know, but it helps me understand why some
apples survive -40C, but most don't.  In the same way our wild black
cherries (used to be called "chokecherries", but that was bad for marketing
purposes) can easily take -40C, but sweet cherries and most tart cherries
can't.  I have heard of a "fish antifreeze" that you can spray on the plants
that will make them hardier, probably by lowering the temperature at which
the water in the cells freezes, but this was an experimental product made in
Norway from codfish.  I guess it didn't work very well, as I haven't heard
anything about it in several years.
Bernie Nikolai
Edmonton, Alberta zone 3/2

At 07:42 PM 3/28/02 EST, you wrote:
>What is it about the composition of a plant that makes it hardy, half
>hardy or tender?  I'm assuming that it must be many factors, otherwise
>some researcher would be plugging the "cold gene" into citrus and bananas
>and we'd all be growing them.  Can anybody shed some light on this?   
>
>Scott Breneman
>zone 6  
>
>


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