Title: Resource: Varieties and Cultivars
Course: RSC_FST1100_CANVASCOURSE > Section: Week 2

This video was published in November of 2017. The source talks about some of the different varieties of oranges grown. It's five minutes long, so watch the whole thing.

Source Live | Sunkist Grower: Porterville Citrus

Humans have been messing with the genes of food for years through selective breeding. This video is less scientific and more entertaining, but it shows the differences that selective breeding has made in the fruits and vegetables we know today.Watch all ten minutes.

Top Ten Foods that Originally Looked Different

You will find the words varieties and cultivars used interchangeably out in the processing industry.

Varieties often occur in nature and most varieties are true to type. That means the seedlings grown from a variety will also have the same unique characteristic of the parent plant. Cultivars are not necessarily true to type. In fact cultivar means "cultivated variety."  Therefore, a cultivar was selected and cultivated by humans. Some cultivars originate as sports or mutations on plants. Other cultivars could be hybrids of two plants. To propagate true-to-type clones, many cultivars must be propagated vegetatively through cuttings, grafting, and even tissue culture. Propagation by seed can produce something different than the parent plant.

The only way to know for sure is to know the scientific name. Varieties and cultivars have different naming conventions. A variety is always written in lower case and italicized. It also often has the abbreviation "var." for variety preceding it. The first letter of a cultivar is capitalized and the term is never italicized. Cultivars are also surrounded by single quotation marks (never double quotation marks) or preceded by the abbreviation "cv.".

On this webpage "All About Apples", the US Apple Association refers to all the popular apples as varieties, probably because explaining the difference to the public is time consuming, and generally only the horticulturists really care. They list many of the uses of each apple, which a processor would need to know.

All About Apples

However, on the Penn State Extension webpage, "Apple Cultivars" they list the popular types of apples that are actually cultivars, and their ancestry. The article also discusses things like storage, growing season, and susceptibility to disease; things that a grower and a processor would need to know.

Apple Cultivars