A GREAT fruit hunt is over, after a Daily Echo story proved hugely "profit-apple" for national horticulture experts.

The re-discovery in Dorset of the long-lost Profit cooking apple, featured in the Echo last week, triggered a flood of calls from local residents claiming to have the variety growing in their back gardens.

Publicity also smoked out the mystery owner of the first apple to re-surface, retired farmer George Tozer from Cranborne Chase, and now grafts from his tree and another specimen will be used to restore the apple to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) collection.

Profit apples have not been officially recorded in England since 1946, but a search was sparked when Ringwood pomologist Harry Baker came across one during a showcase at the Kingston Maurward College, near Dorchester.

People from Bournemouth, Blandford, the New Forest and beyond have since come forward offering possible examples of the hard-to-find fruit.

He said: "This has sparked an amazing level of interest, not just locally but nationally.

"Not everyone who called will definitely have a genuine Profit tree, but it is great to know the variety is still alive and well."

Profits - large, flat, yellow apples with a red-orange flush - were first recorded in 1863, and once rivalled the Bramley for popularity with shoppers before fading out during the 1940s.

It was also lost from the RHS garden collection when it moved from its original Chiswick base to its current home in Wisley, Surrey.

But, thanks to Echo readers, Mr Baker's glaring gap will soon be filled.

"RHS experts are going to take a woodgraft from the tree near Tollard Royal, Cranborne Chase, plus another from a specimen grown in North Dorset, and propagate the variety in the gardens at Wisley," he said.

"It looks like the Profit has been grown in the Dorset/Hampshire area for a long time, but people just didn't realise what was under their noses."