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  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: nafex@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [nafex] Apple quality, Gala
  • Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 06:13:23 -0000

For a good many years Galas have been in the supermarkets of St.
Catharines, Ontario most of the year, between New Zealand and North
American production. They are good, but not really outstanding.
However, a few years ago I bought some Galas from a small local
grower in the farmers' market here , which were extremely tasty with
a "wild apple" flavour note I had tasted before only in a very few
very special seedlings.

I am sure one of the differences between supermarket apples and those
of the best quality is the amount of nitrogen used. It is known that
best quality and keeping ability comes with a moderate amount of
nitrogen and therefore moderate yield. Commercial growers use fairly
high amounts of nitrogen on fresh market apples for yield and
financial survival, and higher amounts still on processing apples.

Picking time is also a factor. With some apples like Golden Delicious
if the fruit is picked at the time for best quality, even for
storage, either the picking is very slow and expensive or the
proportion of bruised apples is unacceptable - unless the grower has
managed to train and keep a very skilled and careful group of
pickers, which is rare.

I don't expect in the foreseeable future to see mass production
apples reach the quality attainable by *knowledgeable* and careful
home growers.

The best Jonagold I ever ate came from a home orchard tree with no
fertilizer, but on clay soil long in sod. The best McIntosh type
apple (identification was a little doubtful) I ever ate came from an
old homestead tree which had not been fertilized in many years, but
after an unusually sunny and warm summer. Both trees grew near
Kingston, Ontario at the northeastern end of lake Ontario, on the
lakeshore.

The ignorance of the modern apple eater and buyer about cultivars
and quality factors is a problem, and the anonymity of bin apples is
another problem. In stone fruit the problem is even worse, for the
retail customer is not allowed to know the cultivar name and in many
cases the grower name. Some commercial growers in the roadside
stand/farmers' market trade seem to grow for quality to some extent,
but most grow to a minimum standard and care only about yield. There
is no reward in the mass market for any other policy.

Sports selected for eye appeal rather than taste are another problem.

But I am not sure that things were ever a great deal better in the
past on average; indeed I have read of Ben Davis apples a century ago
being shoveled out of boxcars into the buckets of housewives, which
sounds rather ominous for taste and texture. Possibly in the past
quality was more variable both for good and ill. But perhaps, given
what the psychologists tell us about the power of variable interval
and variable ratio reinforcement, the variable quality of the past
was effective in getting people to buy fruit.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


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