The wisdom of Worldwide Fruit establishing two top fruit trial sites in Kent has been reflected this season as its ongoing of evaluation of new apple and pear varieties gets underway.
Caroline Ashdown, trials co-ordinator and also responsible for the the Jazz programme, revealed that one of the orchards on member Chandler and Dunn's farm at Ash was badly hit by hail.
"It is obviously a great disappointment, but at least our selection programme can continue in 2007/2008," she says. "At Ash there may not be much fruit but we are still able to assess limited quantities for taste, colour and shape although not storage capability." The other orchard on Clive Baxter's farm near Maidstone escaped.
New apple and pear varieties have been planted every year since both sites became operational in 2001. Currently there are 55 different apples and pears on trial, and at this time of the year attention is focussed on early varieties which can fit into the seasonal mid August/mid September window between Discovery and Cox.
Most are still only identified by WWF codes, but some are about to be christened, and there is one which by chance was already found to be named.
Reflecting the international linkage within the industry, two of the current early selections have been taken from France, namely Davodeau Ligonniere and Delbard.
The other, already named Festival, was originally purchased from the latter breeder by one of WWF's growers, Chandler and Dunn. Some 500 trees have been growing as pollinators in the UK over the past five years.
"Coincidentally, we had already believed that it showed promise," says Ashdown, who makes constant trips across to the Continent at this time of the year as part of the evaluation process. "In fact it was already on the fast track. This early variety has already has shown itself to fulfil the requirements of excellent taste, colour and, shape and colour showing that there is always room for something which is high quality and an improvement on what is currently available," she added.
"There is already an exclusive agreement in place with Marks & Spencer to sell the limited quantities."
And looking to the future there is a further glimpse that there are some exciting later cropping apple varieties in the pipeline.
One is the product of the New Zealand breeding programme, the other is from the Continent. Over 100 trees of Evelina are already in the ground in the UK, which part from its high colour is showing sufficient disease resistance to be grown organically.
The other is a Braeburn/Gala hybrid, similar to Jazz, and will be named shortly.
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