A note on promising early colouring apple bud sports identified from commercial exotic apple germplasm

Abstract

Somatic mutations (bud sports) add to the genetic variability in many crop species through outcrossing, sexual recombination, polyploidy etc. and consequently alters the overall reproductive growth characteristics, out of which most frequently expressed one is the fruit colour sport. The commercial signi cance of red colour in apples has generated an increasing interest in the enhanced colour found in apple sports. Many sports of 'Red delicious' and 'Gala' have been spoted and of these a number are believed to have enhanced red colour. Keeping in view, present investigations were undertaken to nd early coloring bud mutations in different apple growing pockets of Shimla district of Himachal Pradesh, India. The research led to the identi cation of two early colouring bud sports i.e "Kanwar Red" originating from cv. Red Delicious and "Vance Early" originating from cv. Vance Delicious. "Kanwar Red" was found to be early in colouring with marked presence of lenticels scattered on the blushed fruit as compared to the striped fruits of mother variety. In "Vance Early" earliness and high intensity of colouring with the further exception of darker nal colour in comparison to the mother variety was found. Apart from these, the bud mutants also differs in several physical and biochemical fruit characters. The commercialization of such bud sports will lead to a reduction in the use of coloring chemicals for fetching early market apart from creating a valuable gene pool which can be used in future breeding programme to develop early colouring strains in apple.