Hello! So I’ve been reading this book chapter about apples and in it it says that apples grown from seed tend to be very different from the apple from which the seed came, and frequently lack desired characteristics. Later on in the chapter, it says that what growers do is they usually graft together a rootstock and a scion to form an apple tree that has desired characteristics (and that also bears fruit with desired characteristics?). But the rootstock and scion are grown from seed, no? So how do they come together and produce fruit that is similar to apples that have been grown on the orchard in the past and that DOES have desired characteristics? I feel like there is something fundamental that I am not getting. Any help understanding this would be appreciated.
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Planting an apple seed is like buying a lottery ticket. You don’t know what kind of apples the tree is going to give you.
But, if you plant a whole bunch of apple seeds, you’ll eventually get a tree that gives you apples you like. Now, you can cut a branch off that tree and graft that to root stock, and then you can take more cuttings from those trees… and so on. You are basically making a bunch of clones that will all make the same type of fruit.
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