Apples are not bred, but rather discovered. Most apples grown from seed are small and sour; fine for cider but bad for eating. Every so often a good eating vari

Apples are not bred, but rather discovered. Most apples grown from seed are small and sour; fine for cider but bad for eating. Every so often a good eating variety pops up, and if humans are around, they'll keep a graft of it and then we have (essentially) clones of that one for evermore. Johnny Appleseed's plantations ahead of the frontier (for the purpose of cider) are responsible for many apple varieties that exist today, on account of the sheer number of trees grown from seed. Edit: actually, as I just read from a link further down, it's a bit more complicated than the and there are breeding programs, but they are still much like discovery, but trying to wrest a little bit of control from a mostly random process. I suspect that there are certain growing techniques (i.e. environmental controls) that are used to enhance size, sweetness, etc, but not really sure about that.