Yes, virtually all fruit is technically “cloned” because it is not grown from seed. Cloning means the genetics of the offspring are identical to the parent. For fruit, this has been the means of propagation for centuries. If you plant the seeds from say, an apple variety that you particularly enjoy – several years later you will be disappointed to find that the fruit is not at all like the one you originally ate. It will probably be more like a crab apple. People long ago discovered that desirable specimens must be propagated by rooting, grafting, or budding onto some other root stock, and all of those are means of cloning. And yes, some fruit varieties were developed using mutation breeding.
As Michael Pollan so nicely explains in his book "The Botany of Desire", Johnny was just opportunistically starting apple tree nurseries at the front of Western settlement because of a provision in the Homestead Act which required each land recipient to cultivate 40 apple trees. Johnny was there sell them what they needed. The actual goal was to insure that the settlers would be able to make their own alcohol supply in the form of hard cider (how’s that for a “nanny state!”). For cider, it didn’t much matter what sort of fruit was produced, so the variable seedling trees were acceptable. If the settler wanted a good eating apple they could graft a branch of it onto Johnny’s seedlings. Today, the rootstocks for most fruit trees are selected for specific dwarfing and/or pest resistance traits and also clonally propagated.
- More Here
As Michael Pollan so nicely explains in his book "The Botany of Desire", Johnny was just opportunistically starting apple tree nurseries at the front of Western settlement because of a provision in the Homestead Act which required each land recipient to cultivate 40 apple trees. Johnny was there sell them what they needed. The actual goal was to insure that the settlers would be able to make their own alcohol supply in the form of hard cider (how’s that for a “nanny state!”). For cider, it didn’t much matter what sort of fruit was produced, so the variable seedling trees were acceptable. If the settler wanted a good eating apple they could graft a branch of it onto Johnny’s seedlings. Today, the rootstocks for most fruit trees are selected for specific dwarfing and/or pest resistance traits and also clonally propagated.
- More Here
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