fruits with minimal grower intervention. In short, it would be the opposite of a university or government research farm. The development of cultivars would be based on organic or ‘low’ organic to demonstrate the resilience of the plants making both individual selections as well as group or population selections. (Not the typical one in a million chance scenario common with modern day plant breeding.) A farmer or grower could sell the seeds, the fruit and the cultivars of these plantings and would in essence become the new land grant university. This system spread out over many geographical regions would be preferred over large collections of single cultivars in one or two locations where a single disease could wipe out a whole collection. Everyone could be the uni-versity.
To grow this wild goose plum we started with the original grafted tree and then ‘teased out’ a complex and diversified seedling progeny growing out four successive generations. Although variable from seed, there are no ‘inferior’ seedlings from this group. This type of tree breeding or selection could be used ‘as is’ for future orchards or further selected for clonal use if it meets the standards of no or low spray fruit.