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Is it sensible and possible for a home gardener to attempt to create new cultivars (e.g. of citrus) via manual/controlled pollination in a home garden without specialist equipment?

For instance, if I wanted to cross two different apple cultivars is it easily achievable without using specialist equipment to prevent the flowers from being accidentally fertilised by the wrong pollen?

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Not a proper answer to the breeding, but "Seed to Seed" by Suzanne Ashworth describes relatively simple techniques to prevent crossing in vegetables (e.g. bagging ears of corn or tying off squash blossoms). I presume that similar techniques would work for fruit trees. – bstpierre Jan 12 at 3:32
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The answer is yes, but it is going to vary widely. For an extreme case, Hexlectris orchids can't even be propagated - so no in that case. Some features will make it easier - for example, plants which quickly reach maturity will be much easier. E.g. it will be much easier to breed peppers (maturity in perhaps 6 months) versus trees (years). Quicker breeding cycles speed up the process, making it practical in home locations and timescales. Similarly, plant size is a factor (you can grow a lot of peppers in the space taken by a couple of trees). – winwaed Jan 12 at 13:44
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Yes, it is doable. The more crosses you do, the more likely you will come up with something good. The more cultivars that exist for whatever you are breeding the less likely you will come up with an improvement.

Smaller plants would be amenable to home breeding. Large trees like apples would be difficult to come up with an improvement over other varieties.

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Regarding "Large trees like apples would be difficult to come up with an improvement over other varieties" presumably because it takes so long to propagate and grow to be big enough to produce fruit? – Lisa Jan 15 at 22:42
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No because for a home gardener having many large trees isn't practical. If you have 1+ acres to devote to plant breeding this problem goes away. – Shinyosan Jan 17 at 20:08
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