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[markl <markl@nytec.com>]

from NY Times magazine Dec 25, 2004
Miracle Grow
by William Grimes (a NAFEX member?)

Every plant breeder has a dream. For Ross Sanborn, a longtime farm adviser at 
the University of California, it was the perfect apricot. Sanborn spent 
decades developing a white apricot he called an Angelcot, a velvet-skinned, 
ovoid fruit with pale yellow skin and white, juicy, intensely sweet flesh. 

In 1976, a friend serving as a farm adviser in Iran sent him a package of 
white-apricot seeds, as well as some seeds from Morocco. Sanborn planted 
them, and the apricots that resulted were a revelation. Sanborn then grafted 
the best plants onto trees at a nearby farm, and one thing led to another. In 
the 1980's, he bought a ranch in Brentwood to continue his research. Along 
with apricots, he grew a dozen varieties of cherries, hazelnuts, chestnuts, 
peaches, nectarines, grapes and what he described as ''oddball'' figs. A 
cherry he helped develop, the Brooks, is now one of the leading early-growth 
sweet cherries produced in California. In 1996, the California Cherry Growers 
and Industries Foundation named him Cherry Man of the Year. 

At the time of his death at 84, Sanborn was still tinkering with the 
Angelcot, trying to develop greater hardiness so it could ship across country 
without bruising and an eye-catching blush on the skin. He gave its various 
cultivars, all sold under the Angelcot brand name, fanciful names like 
Heavenly, Saintly and Pearly Gates. Sanborn set his sights very high. The 
Angelcot was intended to be divine, the fruit of the gods. He came very 
close.