New Website Aids In Variety Selection
January 8, 2013 
Win Cowgill of Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, and Jon Clements of the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, have developed a new website designed to assist apple growers in variety and cultivar selection for new orchard plantings. Appletesters.net is also designed to provide a location for anyone conducting cooperative apple evaluation and testing to report and archive their findings using a unified protocol for apple variety fruit and trees.
Variety and cultivar selection is the largest economic decision a grower can make when establishing a new high-density orchard block of a thousand trees or more per acre using tall spindle systems.
Appletesters.net allows growers or potential growers to log on and view records of a variety from different locations over multiple years to assist making their planting decisions. The online records allow cooperators and growers to see what variety characteristics are performing best in their area. The database will include pictures and casual observations in addition to fruit quality measurements and important horticultural characteristics including tree habit, bloom time, disease tolerance, mortality, precociousness, fruit appearance, taste, storability, and more.
Directions For Use
• Point your web browser to: http://appletesters.net
• Click on the apple testers database Guest Login
• This brings you to the login page; select the guest account button and click login.
• This brings you to a database record; you are now in the system. The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with the database layout. In the tool bar at the top, all the way to the right is a help button.
Click the help button to open a new window that contains the directions as to how the database works. Read through and see what it’s all about. This window will stay open for reference at any time.
Example Of Use
Here’s an example of one way to use the database. In the tool bar, select the button “Find.” This will bring up a blank database record. You can search on any criteria; in this case, select the cultivar box by typing a cultivar/variety, such as Zestar. Then go back up to the tool bar and click the “Perform Find” button. This brings up seven records for Zestar. You know this by again looking at the toolbar on top in the left hand corner at “Found Records.” With Zestar (As of 12/15/12) you will see seven records that you can cycle through using the arrows to the left of the Found Records icon.
Appletesters.net will become an important repository of cultivar/strain information on tree growth and fruit quality over many seasons. Such information should be very useful to apple growers looking for more and/or unbiased variety/strain information to make future planting decisions.
Funding for this project was provided by a North East SARE partnership grant.
http://www.nesare.org/.
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