Yesterday the repository had their annual stonefruit and mulberry tasting at Wolfskill.  I've usually gone to this but last year I was disappointed with the offerings and decided to pass this year, especially since our weather has been cooler than normal for the past 3-4 weeks.  A good friend of mine went and included the following message:

What's interesting is that most of the varieties that I have came to me from other sources and are not currently available to the public at UCD. I also noticed that in the past few years they added to their collections from donations by individual collectors or research organizations. If the burden became overwhelming for their staff, it makes sense that they would become much more selective when dealing with the public.

Over the years most of the additions have come from donations but they have done some explorations.  Malli, their geneticist, traveled to Turkmenistan and collected poms and various prunus specimens just a few years ago.  It would be great to see more devoted to that sort of work since it's important to the preservation of the germplasm.

I have nothing but the highest admiration for what they have done and continue to do. What a wonderful program. I thank all who have been involved with it.

Are the repository's fruit tasting programs open to the public? I would have gone last Saturday but wasn't sure if it was special invite only or not.
It would have been interesting to see how their trees were handling the last warm winter/global warming some of my trees are experiencing. There just wasn't enough winter chill for some trees. I have one apricot out of around eight trees and one Japanese plum out of seven trees. This is from trees that in the past were loaded with fruit. The few lowest chill pluot trees are still loaded with fruit.  

Ritchie, there is some comment about research but, as I said in the OP, just last August the station leader said that they welcomed orders from backyard growers as he felt that the research done in back yards was valuable.  I think he got too much of what he was asking for. :)

Mara, all of the tastings are open to the pubic but mostly promoted through CRFG chapters.   In some years they would lead tours out in the orchards as well and allow people to pick fruit but that stopped also because it became too difficult to manage.  I didn't go to this tasting as I honestly didn't think that they'd have much good fruit to taste because of our recent cool weather.

Harvey,
Thanks for info -- oh and btw you should have gotten something from me by now.
mgg

Thanks for the info Harvey. I’d like to go to a fruit tasting in SoCal in the future.

It’s not the last few weeks of cool weather affecting crops because my low chill nectarines and pluots have a normal to abundant fruit crop: Geo Pride, Early Golden, and Splash. This article was on the Dave Wilson Nursery website, and it explains why my apricots and Japanese plums are not bearing now:
“Insufficient chilling last winter significantly reduced some California deciduous fruit tree crops, Northern California cherry growers and Southern California home growers being among those affected.” http://www.davewilson.com/community-and-resources/blog/2015/01/fruit-tree-chilling-january-10-2015

It’s interesting that this article has been re-written since I first read it to minimize the impact of last winter’s warming on SoCal’s home growers. When I first read it last January, it was different, more strongly worded about the impact of the warm winter. I wonder if this news affected fruit tree sales? 

Mara, you are talking about something entirely different. The cool weather in NorCal for the last month is having a signjficant effect on fruit development and ripening. It is cool and windy today with a marine layer overhead. We have been below 80F for the past month but will warm up aittle later this week. We should have some days in the 90s. Some years we hit 100 by now.

The propaganda people no longer call It " Global Warming " since the embarrassing actual science shows the planet has actually been very slowly cooling over all globally for the last 100 years . ; )

The propaganda people now call it " CLIMATE CHANGE "  ;)


Its been cooler and wetter here for three years now .. rain rain rain ...

cool wet weather starting to effect my fruit trees ect.

So all jokes aside ..  ..... do you think they will still send limited cuttings out to individuals if you write a reasonable detailed request . showing you are doing some good research on how different cultivators do in your own areas and if your sharing this information ?