North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dr. Chiranjit Parmar" <parmarch_mnd@dataone.in>]

Dear all,

I gather from Jerry Lehman’s mail to Group that Mr. Gene Wild has a 
collection of 800 apple varieties.  I guess that it it must be the LARGEST 
collection owned by an individual.  

Am, I right?  Or any of you know about a larger collection.

It requires great passion to build such a large collection of varieties as it 
is not a good commercial strategy.  In India, kings and big landlords used to 
build large collection of mango varieties but here I have not heard a 
collection bigger than of 350 mango varieties.  However, 400 years ago there 
once existed a mango orchard which had one lakh (100,000) mango trees and it 
was called Lakh Bagh (bagh=orchard).  But it was got planted by the great 
Moghul Emperor Akbar.

I keep collecting such bits of information for my “Fruit Facts” which I 
publish weekly in Fruitipedia and one Indian newspaper.  I think Gene’s 
collection can feature in that if it the largest collection by an individual.

Jerry:

Can you give me contact details of Gene Wild?

Dr. Chiranjit Parmar
186/3 Jail Road
Mandi HP 175001, India
01905-222810; 094181-81323
www.fruitipedia.com