Country Roads

Apples have a certain drama about them. From their star
performance in the bible’s first book, Genesis, to the bite of the
fruit that fells Snow White, apples are part of many stories, many
cultures across the globe.
Did the apple’s origin come from the Holy Land? The Euphrates
River Valley? China? These possibilities all have their supporters.
Frank Browning, author of “Apples,” places the fruit’s birthplace
in the environs of Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan.
The name literally means “Father of Apples.” In 1992 Frank
Browning visited Alma-Ata specifically to meet Aimak Djangaliev, a
gentleman in his 80s whose life has been devoted to the
preservation and study of the wild apple and apricot forests which
grow on the slopes of the Tian Shan “Heavenly Mountains” between
Kazakhstan and China.
It is believed that Alma-Ata is the true source of the beginning
point of departure for the apple, since the city was a trading
center along the Silk Route between the far east to the middle east
and Mediterranean, dating back to Alexander The Great.
World renowned Russian plant geneticist, Nicholai Vavilov, spent
much of his lifetime traveling five continents in search of the
origins of plants. His seed collection would be one of the most
extensive in the world — one that would be defended unto death by
his fellow scientists in Stalingrad during the siege by German
troops. Some died of starvation rather than consume Vavilov’s
precious seeds.
Vavilov, himself, died in prison, a victim of heinous lies and
scientific error promoted by an unbalanced, power-hungry scientist
named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Lysenko influenced his way to
become Stalin’s closest scientific advisor and succeeded in
convincing Stalin that Vavilov’s theory of genetics was “subversive
and anti-Soviet.” Russian genetic research specialists lost
funding, then freedom, and finally, their lives.
Aimak Djangaliev met Nicholai Vavilov when the geneticist was on
a trip to the apple forests. Aimak was a teenager at the time and
was put in charge of Vavilov’s horse. Later, upon the death of
Vavilov in 1943, Djangaliev devoted his life to continuing the work
of protection and study of the ancient apple forests.
Between 1943 and the 60s, all serious genetic research ceased.
Then, during the period of a powerful Soviet Union, up to the
1990s, the forests were ignored in favor of political power and
industrial growth.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the now independent
“states” looked to new sources of potential wealth, for without
communist Mother Russia, they needed to earn their own bread, so to
speak.
Development and modernization appealed to the wealthy in the
cities and people looked to the sloping foothills of the mountains
as possible home sites.
Aimak Djangaliev pointed to the dachas (vacation homes) that
appeared everywhere in the apple forests. Each consumed at least
one-quarter if not one-half of an acre of forest, usually cleared.
There will be hundreds if not thousands of them in the future,
bemoaned Aimak to Frank Browning.
In recent years apple scientists Philip Forsline and Herb
Aldwinckle of the Geneva Apple Station connected to Cornell
University in upstate New York have begun a cooperative research
program with Plant Genome Laboratory of Kazakh Academy of Sciences.
They have observed that within the ancient apple forests some of
the trees are immune to the diseases and pests that plague most
apple trees. Apple scab, Fire Blight and the Codling Moth are the
Big Three challenges of apple growers. Within the Kazakh orchards
can be found trees that are susceptible as well as those that
aren’t. It is the plant geneticist’s job to isolate the gene that
conveys a particular immunity, resulting in an apple variety that
requires no spray.
Geneva’s Forsline is the curator of the apple repository, caring
and protecting more than 3,700 apple wood specimens. Only a mere 15
to 20 percent of apple varieties comprise the whole of our apples
in the USA. The Kazakh forests contain the other eighty
percent.
Just to have some trees that are not the top choices of the
Codling Moth would be a huge step in the right direction. Tom
Unruh, an entomologist with the US Department of Agriculture in
Yakima, Washington, informs us that while apples in his area have
to contend with one generation of Codling Moth each spring, we in
California have no less than four generations of them.
For all you fruit tree caregivers, and I have a great one on
this farm who is pruning at this moment, recall the scientists,
some of whom have given their lives, to the preservation and study
of the origins of some of our most beloved and historic food. And
when we read about Kazakhstan, often in the news these days since
it is a neighbor of Afghanistan, imagine our planes flying over the
mountain slopes where the apple was born.
Take care with that apple tree. Its ancestors watched Alexander
The Great ride by and provided a welcome snack.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander
Valley.