Monkey Business In China Pays Off In Apples
GENEVA, N.Y., Phil Forsline
and Herb Aldwinckle have won
some hard-fought victories in
their war against apple pests,
but they met their match when
confronted by rogue monkeys.
The two were on a trip to China
to collect wild apple germplasm
when a band of primates
attacked their party.
“One of them ripped my wife’s
poncho and grabbed her collect
ing bag,” said Aldwinckle, a
mild-mannered Brit who is the
chairman of the U.S. Apple
Germplasm Committee. “I
yelled at him as loudly as I
could. But when he stood up on
his hind legs, screamed back at
me with a blood-curdling
screech and showed his fangs,
we dropped our bags and got out
of there as fast as we could
walk.”
The scientists ventured back
about an hour later. They found
their cloth bags ripped open and
the small, bitter apples they had
been collecting strewn about the
forest floor.
The party of four Americans
and four Chinese was on a two
week expedition to expand the
apple collection at the USDA
ARS Plant Genetic Resources
Unit (PGRU) at Geneva that is
used for breeding and species
preservation. At the time of the
attack, they were 11,000 feet
high in the mountains of
Sichuan in central China on the
Tibetan plateau, one of the most
botanically diverse regions of
the world.
Sichuan and neighboring
provinces of china are consid
ered the center of diversity for
many wild -species of apples that
are important for the PGRU col
lection. The U.S. team, in coop
eration with scientist form other
countries, completed four expe-
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to the former U.S.S.R. in
Central Asia to collect other wild
apples more closely related to
the commercial apple.
Forsline is curator of the
PGRU apple collection at
Geneva, the world’s largest “liv
ing library” of apples, with some
5,000 apple trees representing
2,500 different accessions,
among which are wild species,
landraces, current cultivars and
obsolete cultivars. Over 1,000
new additions including seed
populations as well as selected
elite clones from the wild habi
tats have been added to the col
lection from the five collecting
trips.
Aldwinckle, a plant patholo
gist at Cornell, uses genetic
material from these trips and
the apple collection in the root
stock development program at
the New York State Agricultural
Experiment Station in Geneva
that he runs jointly with a plant
breeder, and has successfully
developed rootstocks that are
resistant to fire blight and phy
tophthora. Other researchers at
the station and worldwide also
use the material. The new col
lections are being evaluated at
25 different laboratories world
wide. On this trip to China,
Aldwinckle and Forsline were
accompanied by Laura Benson,
a graduate student in plant
breeding, Herb’s wife
Bernadine, and from four to
eight Chinese cooperators,
depending on the site.
Collecting wild germplasm is
not easy. In addition to fighting
monkeys, malaria, and mosqui
toes, scientists have to adhere to
Strict governmental protocols,
systematically keep track of the
material they collect, and pro
tect it during the long trip. To
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arrange the China trip, for
instance, permitting procedures
had to be filed with the Chinese
Ministry of Agriculture, the
forestry department, the provin
cial governments of the
provinces, and local administra
tive district’s foreign affairs
office. Researchers from New
York were not allowed to pick
the fruit from the trees. That
privilege was granted to their
Chinese colleagues, especially
professor Li Yunong, of the
Southwest Agricultural
University in Bei Bei, Chonqing,
and his associate, Zhou Zhiqin,
who were authorized to collect
seven of the 15 species the party
requested. “Li and Zhou were
very helpful.” said Aldwinckle.
The party collected apples in
five different ecosystems
throughout Sichuan.
The trip was funded by a
grant form the USDA, which
funds germplasm collection trips
around the world. Members of
the group hope to return to other
areas of China to collect samples
in the fall of 1999.
To preserve the diversity of
the apple gene pool, scientists
and plant explorers from the
Experiment Station and the
U.S.D.A. have trekked the world
in search of primitive varieties
and wild relatives. Prospecting
for apple germplasm is like
prospecting for green gold.
Germplasm contains important
genetic traits that have the
potential to boost disease and
insect resistance, increase yield,
and improve quality. Apply
germplasm is the product of mil
lions of years of evolution, thou
sands of years of selection by
humans, and scarcely 100 years
of scientific plant breeding.
With it, researchers can help
fight epidemics of pests and
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security of the world’s apple sup
ply-
“Wild germplasm is critical in
maintaining diversity in the
gene pool,” Forsline explains. If
a new strain of disease or insect
comes along that decimates cur
rent commercial varieties like
Mclntosh or Gala, for instance,
germplasm which has evolved
desirable traits through natural
selection might provide genes
for resistance that could be bred
into future varieties.
Apple explorations have
taken Aldwinckle and Forsline
and other U.S. and international
researchers to Kazakhstan and
neighboring former U.S.S.R.
states in search of Malus siever
sii, which is a wild relative of the
cultivate apple (Malux x domes
tica). Since the first trip in
1989, Aldwinckle and Forsline
have been collaborating to eval
uate M. sieversii for resistance
to apple scab, cedar apple rust,
and fire blight.
Researchers now think that
apples originated in Central
Asia and then migrated along
trade, silk, and spice routes into
the Middle East and Then
Western Europe, making adap-
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tations all along the way. Wild
apples in Central Asia range up
to a full pound in weight; in
color from white to yellow, green
and red; in taste from sweet to
bitter; and in tree form from sin
gle to multi-trunked, to bush
like. Apples from China were
mostly very small and bitter
with diverse leaf forms but have
other valuable genetic traits.
Aldwinckle, Forsline, and
Benson are just beginning to
evaluate the material they sys
tematically collected in China
and-despite the monkey busi
ness-consider the trip a great
success.
“We are very encouraged by
our initial sampling of the
Chinese germplasm,” said
Forsline. “There appears to be
many traits that will be espe
cially useful in developing new
rootstocks, particularly.”
PGRU and the Cornell
department of horticultural sci
ences are in the process of hiring
a new rootstock breeder who will
be located at Geneva within the
next few months. That person
will cooperate very closely with
Aldwinckle and Forsline’s pro
grams in utilizing these newly
collected genetic treasures.