The article leaves a key point out. This fruit tree is really temperamental to water correctly. Irrigators love and hate this thing. Some fruit bears overwatering gracefully. But with this tree, it begs for water, but if you overwater it even a little, the fruit fails easily. I've watched some big players (Pytech) dump millions of dollars into closed (fully automated), open (just telemetry and recommendation, human then waters) and hybrid loop irrigation methods to try and get this right. It remains a real pain to get right.

(edit: the cosmic crisp is also difficult to grow Just Right(tm))

While I agree they aren’t always the most tasty, they are almost always (like 98%) crisp and never mealy to the point I want to stop eating it, unlike nearly every other breed I’ve tried (which admittedly is only about 7-8 or the most common ones).

I will take a less flavorful crisp apple 100% of the time over a mealy apple.

So even a mediocre Honeycrisp is, to me, still way better than nearly all the other ones.

[1] https://applerankings.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639206

The best apple variety is generally the new one. The market is strewn with the discarded remains of formerly good apples like Fuji and Gala.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp

I think there is a newer cultivar that should be superseding the Cosmic Crisp here soon.

Edit - the Kudos Apple. https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/talking-apples-u-m-0

Garlic is another item ruined by long storage. Christopher Ranch is reportedly storing garlic for 2+ years in refrigeration. That's why it doesn't taste like garlic anymore.

And if you have a bit of land, start some trees! They are a wonderful gift for future generations. Plant a bunch and leave them alone, let the survivors flourish. Worst case they die and you have some good firewood for a bbq.

Apples are interesting and this is a great example of the unexpected challenges you can face growing them. Every honeycrisp tree is a perfect clone of the very first one, but the environment of each is not a perfect clone of their original environment. And the interplay of genetics and growing conditions can have very unpredictable results.

As others have pointed out, this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse. One thing I will add to this discussion, though I don't know if it is true in the case of Honeycrisp, is that it is definitely not a matter of breeding (nor selective breeding, breeding for storage, etc): in order to produce more apple trees, Honeycrisps (or any other variety) aren't bred, they are asexually propagated through grafting. That means all Honeycrisp trees are more-or-less genetically identical.

That said, just like any organism, as trees grow and produce new cells at the tips of branches, there is always a chance for a mutation. Sometimes these branch mutations (called "sports") have visible genetic differences: stronger coloration, earlier ripening, or perhaps earlier storage (though this is harder to notice). This is how Red Delicious went from a wonderful apple to tasteless, mealy cardboard: sports were selected over time that prioritized storage and color over texture and flavor.

As an apple grower, I have had the opportunity to taste Honeycrisps straight off the tree, and to me, they taste just as flavorless as the ones I get from the store. I grow almost all heirloom varieties, and I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab. If you are in California, I recommend marking your calendar for September to search this variety out at the farmers markets (or better, plant a tree yourself!). There are many other wonderful varieties that stand out from grocery store apples. In a pinch, I'll get a Pink Lady from the store, as I find it's the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars, so the higher starch content may be harder to digest.

Hint: any apple with an "apple green" undercoat is underripe; to pick a ripe apple, wait for that bright green to mellow out or change colors. For redder apples, it can be harder to see, but most apples have some green visible under the red (Pink Lady is again a great example of this). And yes, Granny Smith apples are so sour precisely because they are picked and sold underripe; a ripe Granny Smith is yellow and sweet.

This is compounded by the subtle effect of the trees being adapted for Minnesota, whereas Washington’s climate is much warmer.

I suspect the popularity of honeycrisp will eventually lead it to the same fate as Red Delicious, but only time will tell.

Here, the common apples you can see in supermarkets are Golden Delicious (called just Golden here), Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, Pippin, Granny Smith, Red "Delicious", Kanzi, maybe a few more than I'm forgetting, but no Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp as far as I know.

The local place I go to is straight from the grower and they have a 24/7 cold storage facility of apple bins operated by the honour system. All apples are $1 a pound.

Part of the issue here is that wineries have been historically more profitable than orchards so there are many fewer places to buy local fruit. In the past two years however, there has been cold snaps which have killed 50% and 90% of grape vines subsequently so people are starting to question the stability of wineries.

My new go to is the Magic Star variety, which has been sold as "Sprank" for the last 3 years at least in the Netherlands. These apples keep amazingly well; they ran out of stock around the summer in the last two years, but I found them delicious year round. I hope that this cultivar does not befall the same fate as the Honeycrisp, which I had the pleasure of tasting 5 years ago.

But in the last 2 years, I didn't notice it, but I have been pretty dissatisfied with them but I never really thought about it until this article. It sheds light as to exactly why I don't like it anymore, and that's pretty sad that the industry is getting into that state.

My favorite is the kanzi, but it’s not really available year round. Most apples peak in November anyway

The best in my opinion is Fuji followed closely by Gala.

At first, they only had 2 rows of Honeycrisp apples. Maybe 2% of the trees there...

Now more rows are 'Honeycrisp' than not. As far as I know, they didn't replace all those previously 'not Honeycrisp' trees, though.

And they taste like paint. Ugh.

Interview question: estimate number of pickers and number of trees.

Just make sauce out of the mealy ones.

Side note: Those new jumbo blueberries are insane.

Red Astrachan ftw

(iykyk)

"This is because seedling apples are 'extreme heterozygotes'. Rather than resembling their parents, seedlings are all different from each other and from their parents." [1]

"To propagate a cultivar [variety], material from the original tree (scion) is joined to a rootstock. The rootstock provides the roots for the new plant and the scion forms the top part of the new plant, which produces the fruit. The rootstock comes from another cultivar selected specifically for its ability to grow well in the soil and induce desirable growth habits of the scion (such as dwarfing)."

"The scion is introduced to the rootstock by either grafting or budding. In grafting, a length of dormant wood from the original tree is notched into the rootstock. In budding, small buds are notched into the rootstock. Budding produces more trees from the same amount of wood than grafting." [2]

So when you read "cultivation", it's not like breeding green beans or corn, where you can crossbreed plants and come up with a new type that will "breed true" and then you can make a bunch of seeds to distribute. Cultivation is basically growing a bunch of trees, finding the right combo, then creating a bunch of them

So commercial growers with orchards will buy trees from breeders who create that type of tree by managing the grafting/budding process.

Apparently, though we don't know when breeding started, it's been going on for thousands of years.

Also, Johnny Appleseed wasn't doing anyone favors by spreading apple seeds everywhere because the trees would produce mostly inedible apples.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding

2. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/844-breeding-a-new...

It was a really long article about the history of the apple and difficult growing it, but I didn't see the title answered anywhere. It ended taking about surplus and storage requirements.