North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 02:26 AM 11/18/2004 -0500, Bruce wrote:
> Does
> anyone have suggestions for seedling rootstocks for apples and pears? If
> possible I would like to impart disease resistance to the scions, and I
> would like to use seedlings rather than dwarfing root-stocks because of
> browsing problems.

Some of the more learned folks may correct me, but I'm not aware that rootstocks actually impart disease resistance to the grafted cultivar, they're just resistant to some of the pests/diseases that might take out some of those varieties if they were 'on their own roots', as well as providing degrees of dwarfing.

Winter Nelis seedlings have been widely used as a seedling pear rootstock in the Southeast, and callery pear(Bradford & it's ilk) seems to make a good seedling rootstock for most European pears, if I remember correctly from previous discussions.  Seems like I remember Dr. Natelson mentioning using callery with an interstem of OHxF 513 for dwarfing effect.

Lucky Pittman
USDA Cold Zone 6
AHS Heat Zone 7
Hopkinsville, KY