this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Well the other bit about apple trees is that they exhibit extreme heterozygosity which means they need the genes of two trees to be combined to make viable seeds, and the genes of their offspring are chosen randomly.
So they're like people, the kids might exhibit traits of both parents, but they're not clones. Typically if you plant apple seeds, if they are fertile and sprout, the offspring will make apples that are different from both parents. In most cases, these apples aren't desirable, as there are only a few dozen apple varieties on the market against untold millions of possibilities.