2 new apple species aim to stand up to weather

Sunrise Magic. Crimson Gold. Autumn Glory. Even the names of apples put us in the seasonal spirit, thinking of cider and hay rides, deep-dish confections or a crunchy snap tucked under a gooey caramel coating.

But all is not right in the land of America’s second-most-popular fruit (bananas are top dog).

World apple production is forecast to be down almost 5% this year. U.S. output also has been trending downward, with the last harvest season producing the lowest levels since 2013. It’s largely a weather thing, with heat waves damaging crops from Washington state to China in recent years, while storms have diminished New Zealand’s crop. But it’s not just weather: labor shortages, rising fuel and machinery costs, and a destructive bacterial disease called fire blight are taking a bite out of production, too.

Two new apples species, one red and one yellow, developed at the University of Maryland by researcher Chris Walsh, may solve some of these problems.

For now, they are called MD-TAP1 (the yellow) and MD-TAP2 (the red), a far cry from the mellifluous Cosmic Crisp or Pink Lady.

That will change when a commercial nursery licenses and renames them something sweeter and snappier and starts selling the trees directly to growers.

Walsh had an ambitious goal: develop apples that were heat-tolerant but also fire blight-resistant, and on trees short enough to be easily pruned or harvested from the ground.

It started with a simple cross, he said of the apples he’s growing in an orchard at the Western Maryland Research and Education Center.

“We were looking for a variety that ripened in hot weather and didn’t turn into mush. A lot of varieties are green one day and fall on the ground the next day,” Walsh explained.

One is large and looks and tastes mild and mellow, like a Golden Delicious. The other is sweet, with low acidity, like a Fuji.

He’s hopeful these two new patented apples will thrive in a hotter, drier world.

Walsh, who has been in the apple business for five decades, started the Tree Architecture Program at the university to build new apple varieties to solve emerging local problems, but he quickly realized he was developing solutions for problems nationally and even globally.

The fruit has always been labor-intensive to bring to market, with trees that need to be trained, pruned and harvested by hand. With laborers in short supply in all agriculture sectors, apple farming has been among the hardest

with labor costs rising sharply. According to Walsh, these two new species grow into much shorter trees, which makes them easier to harvest, and they require

lot less pruning and other hand labor than other