Applecrabs are various hybrids between crabapples and apples. They are bred for varying reasons, including disease resistance and use in cold climates because they are often hardier than apple trees and their fruit has the good eating qualities of apples.
Applecrabs are sometimes distinguished from apples if the fruit diameter is less than 50NaN0.
Director of the Canadian Central Experimental Farm William Saunders (1836–1914) produced a number of such hybrids as part of an effort to develop good-quality eating apples for the Canadian prairies by crossing the domesticated apple cultivars with selected winter-hardy crabapple species.[1]
Cultivars include:
A separate project was initiated by C.S. Crandall of the University of Illinois to breed scab-resistant apples by introducing the VF gene from the crabapple Malus floribunda. His work has been continued by the PRI disease resistant apple breeding program with great success.[5]
Among the scab-resistant apples that carry the VF gene are:
Another type of applecrab breeding program stems from Malus niedzwetskyana, a red-fleshed crabapple, a few of which can still be found in Siberia and the Caucasus. It has been used by modern breeders to breed some red-leaved, red-flowered, and red-fruited domesticated apples and crabapples. One example is 'Surprise', a pink-fleshed apple that was brought to the United States by German immigrants around 1840 and was later used by horticulturist Albert Etter to breed some 30 pink- and red-fleshed varieties, the best-known of which is 'Pink Pearl'.[6]
Another horticulturist, Niels Ebbesen Hansen, encountered M. niedzwetskyana in the Ili valley in what is now Kazakhstan during his 1897 expedition to Russia, and began two breeding programs based on this unusual fruit, one aimed at developing a cold-hardy cooking and eating apple and the other aimed at developing ornamental crabapples. His efforts resulted in the 'Almata' apple and the 'Hopa' crabapple, among other varieties. Some of these apples, as well as M. niedzwetskyana itself, are being used for small-scale commercial production of rosé apple ciders.[7]