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  • From: Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] the evils of grafting
  • Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:08:48 -0500


On Nov 13, 2012, at 6:37 PM, Douglas Hinds wrote:

> On 11/13/2012 11:57 AM, Alan Haigh wrote:
>> with all due respect, the idea that eating fruit from
>> grafted clones instead of seedlings is somehow compromising to the health
>> qualities of said fruit seems a little off the beaten path of logic to me.
> That is accurate description of this issue: *_No one_* (neither growers,
> nor distributors, consumers, researchers and / or communicators) has
> questioned the validity of grafting fruit trees, and no comprehensive
> (or even limited) research has been ever realized showing that grafting
> is an innocuous practice. In fact, all you've got (other than the
> supposition that it must be OK because everyone does it - like
> cigarettes and DDT used to be at one time)...

Except that people have been grafting trees since before the Bible was
written -- otherwise, it wouldn't have an injunction against doing so. There
are detailed instructions written by Roman farmers about how to graft. We've
had LOTS of time to observe the ill effect, if any, of grafted fruit.

In contrast, after a few decades of using DDT, people noticed that birds were
disappearing. After a few decades of smoking, doctors observed an epidemic of
previously rare lung cancer.

> ...
> Of course the idea seems out of bounds to you - you've had no contact
> with high quality seedling fruit to speak of. In other words, you (and
> the rest) have had neither a choice or a basis for comparison. People
> think that seedling apples are tart (sure they are, if they're crab
> apples) and that seedling oranges are sour (and they ARE, if that's
> where the seed came from).
...
I've eaten seedling apples. My uncle planted 4 saplings he dug up in the
woods as a young man. They were domestic apples, the results of people
tossing apple cores into the woods. (There are no "wild" large-fruited apples
in the US, they had to be the offspring of an apple someone wanted to eat.)
He destroyed 2 shortly after they fruited because they weren't worth eating.
The other two he kept. One had green fruit, shaped a little like a delicious,
and was sickly sweet with no acidity at all. The other, which still grows on
his property, is has a small yellow fruit. The yellow one tastes great, if
you eat it within half an hour of picking it. Then it get soft and goes
brown. And that's not much of an exaggeration. My husband enjoys them for a
couple of days after picking, but I really don't. They develop off-flavors as
well as getting soft.

The point is that while they are certainly edible, no one would describe them
as better than varieties you can buy from grafted trees, and they aren't
NEARLY as tasty as fresh-picked apples from grafted selected stock. They say
that only about 1/1000 seedling apples is as good as the standard stuff
that's grafted, and I completely believe it.

People here have said that there is much less diversity of fruit in peaches,
and seedlings of tasty peaches routinely produce tasty fruit similar to the
parent tree's fruit. That's just not true of apples.

> ...
> Was Henry David Thoreau a Scientologist? Are you comparing him to Ron
> Hubbert? Was Johnny Appleseed Chapman a shyster? Which of us has
> personal experience to back up his claims? Which of us worked with John
> Martin Reinecke and Bob O. Berg (UCR)? Which of has actually EATEN (and
> grown) seedling fruit since 1967 Which of us is has submitted research
> proposals to his local Biological, Agricultural, Environmental and
> Animal Science Faculty (that have already been accepted in principle)?
> It wasn't you, Alan!
>
> It was me.
>
> Douglas

Thoreau was not a shyster or a scientologist. But he wasn't a scientist,
either. He was a romantic, and a philosopher, and an excellent author. I,
too, have personal experience, and my experience doesn't jib with yours. For
a number of practical reasons, I do prefer own-rooted plants in many
instances. But not for apples.

Ginda
eastern MA, zone 6





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