I seem to recall from my years in Riverside that citrus and stone fruits
grew pretty well there, but we had to head to the hills to find successful
apple orchards (Riverside didn't have adequate cold dormancy period for
reliable apple production -- or, maybe it was the smog!!). Was the UCR
research on apples or pears or on stone-fruit? We did a minor amount
of grafting of plums, apricots and peaches at home in Riverside, but I
never noticed any difference in flavour between the fruit from the parent
(seed-grown) tree and that from the grafted stock.
On my land, it has been my observation that the wild apple seedlings are
very vigourous and hardy. In addition, because they are mostly
scattered around the edges of old fields and pastures, they tend to have
very little insect damage compared to fruit or trees in an unattended (ie,
untreated) orchard situation. A futher observation (though not a
rigourously-quantified one) of mine is that the trees with the best-tasting
fruit seem to be the ones that are more likely to be girdled by mice in the
winter (I have lost some of my favourites this way). My long-term plan
is to graft scions from the good-tasting wild apples onto the vigourous,
and more mouse-resistant rootstock of the sour wild apples (and prune
appropriately over subsequent years). I don't expect the resulting fruit
to be harmful to me or to the wildlife that share the fruit with me. As I
continue to get to know my apples better, I'll know which ones I like best
for fresh eating, for pies, for applesauce. I don't care much whether my
wild apples are "brand name" MacIntosh, Red Delicious, Jonathan or
whatever -- but when I buy apples in the grocery store, I like to have a
little more predictability in what I'm buying (my local stores frown on
taste-testing as you go). I just don't see large-volume fruit supply
working very well (at least for apples) without grafting.
I agree that your hypothesis about grafting _could_ be correct, but I
remain to be convinced of significant -- if any -- adverse effects of
grafting. Unfortunately, since it doesn't seem to be a research priority
for anyone, we aren't likely to find out the truth of the matter anytime
soon.
BOB
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