Soon, better performing disease-resistant apple sales will overtake conventional

Its only a matter of time before new diseaseresistant apple cultivars overtake favorites like Honeycrisp in popularity according to a recent study I know everyone wants Honeycrisp but theyre notoriously hard to grow There are so many issues in producing the fruit the tree might produce a lot one year but none the next the fruit doesnt keep well and is susceptible to disease said Mosbah Kushad from the University of IllinoisRepresentational pictureApples are attacked by all sorts of pests but apple scab a fungus is particularly nasty It can cause yield losses up to 80 percent For traditional apple cultivars and many newer ones including Honeycrisp combating apple scab and other diseases means applying multiple pesticides several times throughout the growing season Fortunately after the gene for scab resistance was discovered by a U of I scientist in 1944 a number of resistant cultivars have been developed Kushad says the early cultivars werent particularly good but more recent ones show a lot of promiseWineCrisp for example is a very attractive and flavorful apple he noted Its not very large but who wants to buy an apple that weighs a pound A new wave of scabresistant apples has been developed and tested as part of a cooperative breeding program through U of I Rutgers University and Purdue University So far several cultivars have proven to be as nutritious or even better for you than older types but until now it wasnt clear whether their quality held up over timeIn a new article Kushad and several collaborators looked at whether scabresistant GoldRush WineCrisp CrimsonCrisp and Pixie Crunch retained their quality under standard postharvest storage practices and compared their performance to scabsusceptible Golden Delicious The researchers exposed the apples to 1methylcyclopropene 1MCP a gas now commonly used in the industry to inhibit ethylene production and slow ripening of stored fruit 1MCP could be the best invention for the fruit industry since apples were discovered Kushad says Aspects of nutritional quality and commercial viability were tested in the fruits after 70 and 140 days of storageIn general the eating quality flesh firmness sugar content and acidity of the scabresistant cultivars was as good or better than Golden Delicious before and after storage And two of the scabresistant cultivars GoldRush and CrimsonCrisp had significantly more antioxidant capacity even after 140 days The cultivars varied in their responsiveness to 1MCP with CrimsonCrisp showing the most promise for longterm storage using the product What the article is saying is that the quality of the scabresistant cultivars is very comparable to standard varieties In terms of nutrition health benefit aesthetic and taste these apples are competing very well As an alternative to scabsusceptible types they will be very attractive especially for organic growers Kushad saysAnd although you may not see WineCrisp on the grocery store shelves yet Kushad pointed out that it and the other cultivars can be found in some local farmers markets and orchards Youll see them in the smaller places first but as volume builds in the top applegrowing states theyll start showing up in the big grocery stores I have no doubt The study is published in the Journal of Food Quality