I have just finished watching Apples: British to the core. A fun BBC4 program on apples. First of all, I didn’t realise that commercial apple trees are Frankenstein-like monsters with the fruiting top part of the one plant grafted onto a root from a different plant. Guess this is because I am an ignorant physicist.

Also, some large fraction of the all world’s apples are from trees with one very popular rootstock, called M9, or a variant of this. I have some Cox’s Orange Pippin in my fridge, you may have Braeburns but both apples may have come from trees with the same roots. Slightly weird.

The M in M9 is from East Malling (Kent). This rootstock is developed in Britain. This was not long after the Second World War, so I guess it was an example of how science revolutionised the productivity of crops then. As it was a while ago they didn’t patent the rootstock.  So many growers all over the world benefited, and we got cheap consistent apples all year round.

Nowadays, a fancy new rootstock would be patented. I am not sure whether this is progress or not. Maybe the progress is not all bad, the patenting paperwork would be tedious but a few rich apple scientists can’t be all bad.