one of the links you posted said it was a chance seedling at the maluma ranch. With "unknown" lineage. Its obviously hass parentage. The odds of getting what appears almost an exact clone of hass from a chance seedling seems pretty unlikely. Then I assume this new variety has been patented? So basically its hass but you have to pay royalty? Thats what Im getting at.
You have to realize Im always skeptical of everything Mark. I want to know the details and who is making money off of everything. Whether its fruit or medicines, technology, war, etc.
You and me both brother. I'm very much a skeptic and cynical of what I hear and read. I'm just relaying what the Aggie specialist is telling me. I'll be glad to give you his work number if you want to chat with him. He's pretty sharp.
I haven't considered getting scions, but I'll see what I can do.
I put in a bunch of hass trees on dusa clonal rootstocks this year. The dusa trees are in a row side by side with a row of zutano rootstock trees. I would like to try this new mulama hass type side by side also. They claim it makes nearly 2X as much fruit as regular hass. I find these claims hard to believe. For me seeing is believing. These claims may be based on higher density of planting. If you grow hass you will see it loads itself with fruit to the point of sagging and breaking branches. So when someone claims their new hass clone makes 50% more, it seems unlikely.
If they have a profit making stake, then yes, they're going to make big claims. The money goes to the propagating nurseries via royalties though. Performance is directly related to ALL the factors that go into production, of any fruit, especially location and the clime, weather and soil profile of a particular area. If a farmer says it's producing 50% more in Australia, then good on him. Apparently it has merit or they wouldn't be swapping out Hass for it, don't care if it came from Mars.
On a similar subject, if you look at the dusa rootstock hype they claim hass makes more fruit on it than other rootstocks. I read the technical documents and trial data etc that the university published. They did all kinds of experiments to come up with this claim. But nowhere in there did they include the zutano seedling as a control group. Its like a whole bunch of academic masterbation they put out and failed to include the gold standard as a reference. I mentioned this to Gray Martin, he seemed to be in agreement that data could be twisted to try and force a conclusion with this rootstock business. It was an interesting conversation.
I can only imagine. I also questioned one of the positions Gray put forth. I find some recommendations aka "standard procedures" with some Aggie fruit specialists ridiculous too, like rough pruning vineyards in the winter. It actually promotes early budbreak thru the re-distribution of auxins, the very outcome you're trying to prevent in case of a late frost.....and it's make work-requiring a helluva lot of labor which is in short supply here.
Regards,
Mark