Participative breeding of unique Danish apple cultivars

The project began in 2013 with a dual purpose: to promote more apple trees in the Danish landscape and to develop robust apple cultivars for organic growers. We collected 10.000 open-pollinated apple-seeds from 52 robust and tasty old Danish apple cultivars from our National apple gene-bank. Then we invited volunteers to sow the seeds in their private farms/gardens. More than 100 volunteered to the project in 2013. In 2019, we followed up on the trees. Approximately 50 volunteers had succeeded to grow about 2000 apple-seedlings. Since 2019, we are evaluating the robustness of the trees, disease tolerance (Apple scab (Venturia inaequalis), Apple mildew (Podosphaera leuchotricha), Apple canker (Neonectria ditissima) and Elsinoe fruit and leaf spot (Elsinoe piri)) and the quality of the fruits, as soon as the trees are fruiting. In 2020-23 we have selected for further investigations: 74 dessert apples, 17 ornamental apples, 6 cider apples, 1 columnar apple and 1 rootstock. In total 99 interesting new apples. The preliminary results of our screening of robustness and fruit quality are described.