The Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) is helping to drive an unprecedented revival in plantings of native Irish apple trees.

A seven-fold increase in sales of Irish heritage apple trees this year has been reported by the Irish Seed Savers Association (ISSA).

The Clare-based conservation body traditionally sold around 2,000 heritage Irish apple trees, but this year that number has ballooned to over 15,000 units.

The inclusion in ACRES of an option to plant a traditional orchard with native Irish apple trees has been a major factor in the surge in sales, according to ISSA executive director Elaine Bradley.

Community orchards

The planting of traditional community orchards by local authorities, many in urban settings, has also fed into the hike in sales.

“In the last three years alone, [the] ISSA has increased its production of heritage apple trees by 548%, marking a significant achievement in its mission to safeguard Ireland's unique apple varieties,” Bradley said.

“We have scaled up production in direct response to the incredible demand for our trees from the public, from farmers via the ACRES scheme and from local authorities involved in planting community and urban orchards,” she explained.

Increased interest

The increased interest in native apple trees is also opening up business opportunities for farmers in the Scarriff area of east Clare, where the ISSA is based.

“In order to scale up, we engaged local farmers and growers, but grafting trees is a specialist skill, so we had to invest in staff training and development and improve our internal management systems.

"All this was done with the help and support of the Heritage Council and the Department of Agriculture, who fund part of our conservation work,” Bradley said.

The native Irish sweet William apple variety.

The ISSA anticipates that the demand for native apple and fruit trees will continue to grow and the organisation is expanding its range of Irish heritage fruit trees as a consequence.

“What we are witnessing is not the overnight success it may seem, but instead the result of 32 years of work, finding and collecting these heritage varieties - safeguarding them in the national collection - and beyond that, promoting conservation through use - and getting the varieties back out to the wider population by getting people to grow and use them again,” Bradley maintained.

Under ACRES, farmers must fence off 0.5ha for their orchard and plant at least 10 trees. The payment rate is €27.49 per tree per year.

The names of the qualifying tree varieties are extremely interesting themselves. They include such beauties as An Cailín Bán, Cavan sugarcane, Turkey willouby, sweet William and blood of the Boyne.