Our mission is to breed disease-resistant apple varieties that meet the demands of today's apple lovers.
Grow apples with respect to the environment
We believe that the protection of your trees from diseases doesn't have to be a burden for your wallet, nature, and human health. That's why we seek individuals naturally robust to scab (Venturia inaequalis), powdery mildew (Podosphaera leucotricha), and fire blight (Erwinia amylovora). Our varieties often require only minimal or no disease protection. It makes them a good choice (not only) for organic growing.
Discover our diverse palette of apples
The wide range of our varieties comprises dessert, columnar, ornamental, and red-fleshed ones. Plus, we have another interesting selections in trials.
Breeding cycle: from pollination to the customer
We feel at home at every stage of the breeding process - from the cross-pollination at the beginning to our research, testing by our partners on their own sites, application for PVR and helping the promising varieties make it on the market. We are in close contact with our partners during the whole process and together bring the best of our work to the world.
It all starts with the thorough selection of parental varieties and their crossing. Planning, isolating branches, collecting "father" flowers and then pollen, emasculating "mother" flowers, pollinating, and finally - picking the developed fruits containing pips in the autumn. Almost everyone from our team takes part in this key part of the breeding process.
Early next year, we sow seeds from the harvested fruits in our modern greenhouse. Every sapling is a new, unique variety. Using inoculation of young seedlings with scab conidia, we can select those most resistant to scab early on.
Only the most robust selections do we graft on dwarfed rootstocks. Thanks to it, they come into bearing several years earlier than seedlings normally do, which makes the selection process much shorter. We taste and evaluate their fruit at regular intervals throughout the storage season. After a long evaluation, only a few of the best ones remain.
We offer the most promising selections to our business partners (growers, nurseries, and marketers) to test them on their own. If some variety is doing well on their site and finds a niche on the market, together we apply it for plant variety rights. After the conclusion of a licence agreement with us, the new variety can be launched on the market. The royalties earned help us in breeding tomorrow's innovative varieties.
Our most popular varieties
- club variety for warm areas with drip irrigation
- grown in the USA, Europe, South Africa and Chile
- about 3.5 mil. trees planted since 2005
- firm, crisp texture, naturally non-browning flesh
- aromatic, honey-sweet flavour
'Topaz' and 'Red Topaz'
- standard scab-resistant varieties for organic cultivation
- grown especially in Europe
- average annual sales 400,000 trees in total
- very good productivity
- firm, crisp, very juicy and tasty
- grower-friendly club variety for intensive management
- grown in Europe and South Africa
- 1.6 mil. trees planted since 2015
- remarkably beautiful fruit
- firm, crisp, fine texture
- finely tart flavour
Melinda® Dolcevita - 'UEB 6581'
- club variety marketed under a joint trademark
- ca. 500,000 trees planted since 2018
- firm, crisp, juicy
- aromatic, exceptionally sweet with little acids
What does the future of apples hold?
We don't rest on our laurels. Developing a new variety that will succeed on the increasingly overcrowded market is a difficult task. We strive to follow the changing customers' demands as well as stay one step ahead the pathogenic fungi. The consumers' whims and pathogen adaptations make breeding an awesome challenge.
Find out more about our varieties bred so far or learn more about what we are currently working on. You might be interested in:
