Elite cultivars Maharaji and Red Delicious were used as parents for creating the mapping population, as these have a number of contrasting attributes ranging from planta type to fruit traits. Controlled crossing was successfully carried out in 2011 and again in 2012 (as a back-up resource) to generate pseudo-test cross sib families (also reciprocal) using ‘Plus’ trees at two locations in Kashmir. We have now established a large number of hybrid seedlings from the crossing work. Our preliminary analysis of these seedlings reveal them to be true segregating hybrids and thus suitable for mapping/linkage analysis.