In 1965 Dr Parmar had published a paper ‘The development of fruit industry’. While I am yet to unearth a copy of this paper at the archives of Punjab Agriculture University in Ludhiana, I saw a snippet of it in a news report. It was Captain Lee and Captain Couts who brought the first apple trees into the state of Himachal Pradesh. ‘Lee before Couts”, says Dr Parmar, “planted the first apple tree in Kullu valley in 1870”. “Other people such as the then tehsildar in Kumarsain had also developed apple orchards towards the end of 19th century but none of them was commercially successful”. The British enjoyed sour in their Apples that people of the subcontinent did not relish. Perhaps, nor did they grow so well.
Such failures were historically widespread when the British had brought the first of apple trees to the Americas. And nor their grafts did well, writes Michael Pollan; not until generations of seedling orchards spread by the likes of Ann Jessop or John Chapman (famed as Annie Appleseed and John Appleseed) gave way to American home-bred - thousands of cultivars producing apples in a diversity of textures, fragrance, flavour. During the 19th century, there were about 2500 cultivars of apple grown in North America alone.
Such an exercise of breeding never took place in these hills. What took place in Western Himalayas appears to be the rather cogent story associated with the rise of 20th-century agriculture science, which at least in that historical moment of discovery of petro-chemicals, refrigeration, together with the rise of industrial chemistry, seemed to have figured it all out - the right cultivar, style of pruning, schedule of insecticides and fungicides, all put in a scalable and replicable model to grow a cultivar across temperate zones of the four continents.
““blemish-free plastic-red saccharine orb””
Satyanand Stokes had been to the US during 1914. He is a mythologised figure in these parts of the hills, at times referred to as the Johnny Appleseed of Himalayas. He was an American who settled in these parts of the hills and associated himself with the Indian National Congress, protests against begar (bonded labour), and the cause of national freedom. During his 1914 trip to the United States, he had bought grafts of the famed delicious tree from Stark Brothers nursery in Missouri. Unlike the sour pippins at Captain Lee or Captain Couts orchards, the Delicious have a canny cane-like sweetness, with a sharp red glint, that draws itself out in an elongated shape which has become a near-universal textbook picture of apples. The Delicious through the 20th century, not only aptly fit that potential text-book picture of an apple, but it also fits the undergoing standardisations of fruit-science - technologies of packaging, refrigeration, and transportation. “The taste of this apple is so generic it could almost be that of any number of other fruits, were they similarly stripped of identifying characteristics”, writes Adam from Adam’s Apples Blog. In Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan described the Delicious as, “blemish-free plastic-red saccharine orb”, and "sweetness without dimension". The original Delicious tree had grown wild between rows of Jesse Hiatt’s farm in Iowa. In 1893 the legendary marketer CM Stark gave it the name, ‘Delicious’. Today a granite monument marks the place where that tree once was. It continues to find life across the five continents, grafted on top of other rootstocks.
Dr Parmar’s view of Satyanand Stokes is less benign, and one of a businessman. ‘He married a local, and saw a business he could build here. He was clever’. ‘I had a friend, Lala Sukhraj who went on to become the deputy director of the department. During the 30s Lala Sukhraj had worked in Kotgarh as a horticulture assistant. Kotgarh was a part of Shimla Hill States. The people in those parts of Shimla Hills regularly asked Stokes for apple trees and grafts, which Satyanand Stokes used to refuse. He shared them with his kin, which primarily consisted of the family he had married into’. Unlike dominant and somewhat mythologised belief, suggests Dr Parmar, it was not Stokes who had gone out to spread apple trees, encourage farmers to bring up orchards, but the state horticulture department. The department did what Stokes had done - propagate the Delicious cultivars because they seem to have worked, and particularly in absence of any extensive, pro-active breeding and testing programs in the state.
Despite the initial wave of research stations, like the one in Sirmaur that was eventually disbanded, “the ensuing generation of fruit scientists was more vested in progressing their research career”, suggests Dr Parmar. “And there was no timely way to do that if you chose breeding as your core focus. Here farmers depend a lot on the state. This was all the truer throughout the 20th century. Farmers primarily relied on technologies the state extended. And the state extended some 4-5 cultivars that Stokes had been growing, with the Delicious being the best-selling, most important cultivar.”
““This is why we have fallen behind””
Within a few decades entire hills and valleys of Sutlej and Beas were colonised by the Delicious tree; not any apple trees, but the one tree that grew to Jesse Hiatt between his farm rows in Peru, Iowa. Thus modern fruit orchards become monocultures of a stranger kind; one extraordinarily vulnerable to pests amidst shifting environmental conditions. Michael Pollan writes in The Botany of Desire, "coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The problem very simply is that the apple trees no longer reproduce sexually, as they do when they're grown from seed, and sex is nature's way of creating fresh genetic combinations. At the same time the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects keep very much at it, reproducing sexually and continuing to evolve until eventually, they hit on the precise genetic combination that allows them to overcome whatever resistance the apples may have once possessed. Suddenly total victory is in the pests' sight—unless, that is, people come to the tree's rescue, wielding the tools of modern chemistry." 'This is why', says Dr Parmar, 'we have fallen behind'.
"This is a continuing problem with fruit trees and production in India. New varieties can only be produced through breeding. Fruit trees are heterozygous". And apple trees are extremely heterozygous. Heterozygosity is a term for genetic variability. An apple seedling is completely unlike its parents. There is no way to determine what will turn out a sweet fruit or an enduring tree. "You have to cross-plant these seeds in hundreds and thousands and wait for 5,9, or 10 years as they start to fruit. ये पूरी तरह से क़िस्मत का खेल होता है (It's entirely a game of luck). You can try a hundred crosses and yield nothing but spitters. Or you may find something delicious (pun intended), but that bears at a very infrequent cycle. Besides attention to fruit and bearing, you have to spend additional years testing vulnerability in specific agro-climatic conditions particularly to common pests and diseases. No one has this amount of patience. Even for someone passionate, such a career is not looked upon favourably within Indian fruit sciences. My colleague who researches on herbicides will produce so many publications in a matter of three to four years, while I will still be waiting for my trees to grow up", laughs Dr Parmar. His free reigning laughter at 81 is thoroughly infectious. "And after that investment of time, it's possible to end up with thousands of spitters, let alone something path-breaking". "वो पूछेंगे तूने 6 साल में क्या किया, मेरे पास तो कुछ भी नहीं होगा बताने के लिए। (They'll ask what have you done in these six years? And I won't have anything to show). This is why no one comes to breeding"
As a result, not only have we not been able to breed new cultivars more suitable to the agro-climatic conditions of western Himalayas, and perhaps more adept at shifting environmental contexts, we don’t even have testing programs for new breeds that are introduced to farmers. “This is why we have fallen behind”, reiterated Dr Parmar. “The present scientists have found a shortcut, where they instead try to shortlist new varieties/cultivars to import. But even that, you need to invest a good seven to eight years testing them, before realising them out to farmers. It’s not necessary for a variety that does well in one part of the globe, to do well in another too. If you’re importing new apple cultivars from Italy you need to test them for a good 10-12 years for yield, bearing, vulnerability to common pests and diseases. There are new quicker processes, such as by grafting, but there you can only test for the fruit qualities and not other variables. Regular orchard trials are indispensable. No one wants to take such a project where their colleagues would say, ‘इसने तो कुछ काम ही नहीं किया (he hasn’t produced any work)’.”
““He hasn’t done any work.””
“Other countries have separate fruit breeding centres. Countries like Sweden have regular orchard trials at these centres. When scientists leave, their position and responsibilities are taken over by those coming in” It felt Dr Parmar’s work found itself at home more at these research fellowships he held in Sweden, Japan, Czechoslovakia, etc. He says, he found the research environment at the University of Horticulture and Forestry stifling, and thus left it in 1992. “I took a pre-mature retirement”. Since then he freelanced on projects with other international universities and corporations. His keen interest was in breeding wild-growing fruits. “It took long for my work to be recognised, but when it was - it met a recognition found rarely in the field”. “In countries such as Sweden, not only are breeding centres separate, but breeding is also recognised as a separate discipline. Breeders, professionally compete with other breeders. In grass and shrub species you can get relatively quick results, but not in fruit trees.”
“Fruit breeding as a discipline and practice in India has suffered a lot. Nor have there been international collaborations like you see in the case with mushroom production. Fruit breeding should be seen as a separate discipline because the professional aspect is very important. At the end of the day, it’s a career. You have to compete, and breeders can’t compete”
““Need to redraw scientific practices and disciplinary boundaries in ways that reflect the needs of farmers””
In the space left out by scientific research and extension, several farmers have emerged as private experts at breeding, and are even called in by leading agriculture universities to deliver their expertise. Dr Parmar talks about Harivan Sharma, a breeder who has bred new varieties of apple trees that are adept to lower altitudes, such as in Kalka - a town situated in the lower Shivalik Hills. “He has made orchards in Nurpur and Kalka, altitudes that were yet not found habitable for apple trees”. “I thought it was a joke”, laughs Dr Parmar. “So I went to visit him. I was surprised. I also gave him my seedlings of avocado”. “Harivan is school drop-out, and he is called at institutions such as IARI to deliver lectures. Harivan is a celebrity.”
I eagerly jot down Harivan’s number. I plan to reach out to him, and share his stories here at The Apple Tree Blog, together with pictures, and hopefully more detailed look at this mysterious apple cultivar.
Dr Parmar suggests that the asymmetries between scientific research and real needs of society are not specific to the case of fruit sciences in India. Such asymmetries are pervasive. “You’ll also find them in industrial chemistry”. “Simultaneously”, he suggests, “there is a real need to redraw scientific practices and disciplinary boundaries in ways that reflect the real needs of society”.