Why All the New Apple Varieties?

Golden Delicious was found in West Virginia in the early 1900s. Gala, which has become the number one produced apple in the U.S. was developed in New Zealand in the 1950s. Honeycrisp, the current hot-selling cultivar was released in the early 1990s developed by the apple breeding program at the University of Minnesota.

Apples are commercially grown in 32 states in the U.S. The five leading apple-producing states in order starting with the largest are Washington, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The total average production in the U.S. is 240 million bushels from 322,000 acres with an annual wholesale crop value of $5 billion.

Customers coming into your farm market may be asking for some new apple cultivar they saw in their grocery chain store. They assume that you are growing it and of course, local produce is always better. Unfortunately, you and I know how the apple cultivar situation has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s with new introductions that were released after Honeycrisp. The general public release of Honeycrisp cultivar stimulated the expansion of the "club variety" syndrome.

In years past, many of the land grant universities had traditional fruit breeding programs to develop new apple cultivars. These might consist of thousands of seedlings developed from crossing two different parents through controlled pollination of flowers. The seeds in the resulting fruit were planted out in large fields to be evaluated. Unfortunately, just like children, the seedlings need to develop and mature before they can produce fruit, a process that took many years. Maintaining all these juvenile plants was a costly and long-term expense.

However, in the mid-1980s researchers knew they had to speed up the process, so they planted seeds and grew young seedling trees until they produced small trees and then selected a bud from that small tree and grafted it onto a dwarfing rootstock. The dwarfing rootstock would induce the shoot that developed from that bud to fruit at an earlier age, speeding up the evaluation process. Concurrently, funding for the University test blocks began to decline. Plant breeders realized they needed to generate income to support their continued work. From these two factors, the concept of trademarking apple cultivar names began.

What is the Difference Between a Patent and a Trademark?

A patent is a limited duration property right, relating to inventions, granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in exchange for public disclosure of an invention. In this case, the development of a new apple cultivar. It is granted to the inventor (breeder/discoverer) to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the 'cultivar' in the U.S. or importing the 'cultivar' into the U.S. A United States utility patent is generally granted for 20 years from the date the patent application is filed, while a design patent protection is 14 years, measured from the date the patent is granted. This latter type of patent is the one assigned to plant material.

A trademark is any word, name, symbol or device, or any combination used in commerce to identify the goods of one manufacturer or seller from the goods sold by others. In short, a trademark is a brand name. A U.S. trademark generally lasts as long as the trademark is used in commerce and defended against infringement. In other words, forever.

Once the patent expires, anyone can purchase and plant trees of that cultivar. The more trees that are planted, the larger the supply of fruit, resulting in lower prices back to the producer. The most recent example of this effect was with the apple cultivar, Ambrosia. When the cultivar, found in British Columbia, was released planting was not restricted. However, because it came from Canada, the availability of the trees to be shipped across the border could be restricted, and it was not until 14 years had passed that growers in the U.S. were able to plant that cultivar.

Current Status of Apple Cultivars

The image below is from the Good Fruit Grower magazine based on an article in the October 7, 2020 issue written by Jared Johnson, Kate Prengaman, and TJ Mullinax. This shows many of the newly released apple cultivars that are slowly but steadily appearing in your local grocery stores. All the cultivars listed in the image are trademarked. This means that you have to pay a fee to the originator or developer for the right to grow them. Some are also limited by the licensee to specific packing house grower members, regions of the U.S., even to specific countries in the world.

Good Fruit Grower, The club crowd. Jared Johnson, Kate Prengaman, TJ Mullinax // Oct 7, 2020.

In the upper right-hand corner of the image are six packing house companies that primarily sell apples grown in the eastern U.S: Rice Fruit Company, Hess Brothers Fruit Company, Applewood Fresh, New York Apple Sales, BelleHarvest, and Honeybear Brands. Surrounding each of these packing companies is a list of the exclusive apple cultivars that they market.

On the left-hand side of the diagram are packing companies that are based in the Pacific Northwestern region of the U.S. On the bottom right-hand corner is a listing of organizations that manage the licensing of some of the apple cultivars. In this capacity, they determine what packing houses and growers can act as distributors or grow their exclusive cultivars. So, for example, Coast to Coast Growers Cooperative handles the Koru apple cultivar developed as a chance seedling in New Zealand and allows New York Apple Sales, Borton Fruit, and Oneonta Star Ranch growers to act as distributors of that cultivar in the U.S. Licensing agencies may also allow growers in certain areas of the U.S. to plant a limited number of trees with the payment of royalties or per tree premiums.

You will also notice the lighter-colored arrows on the image. These show that certain cultivars are marketed by different fruit packers. For example, Envy and Jazz managed by ENZA are also packed by Ranier Fruit as well as CMI Orchards. SweeTango managed by The Next Big Thing is packed by Stemilt, BelleHarvest, New York Apple Sales, and Applewood Fresh. Honeybear Brands located in Elgin, MN is the sole packer of First Kiss. However, it can be packed and distributed by Stemilt in Washington and Applewood Fresh in Michigan but must be packaged as Rave.

The two packing companies in Pennsylvania also have developed their exclusive brands. Rice Fruit Company is one of the exclusive distributors of Kiku Fuji. Unlike the previously mentioned "brands" this is a strain of Fuji discovered in Japan in 1990 by an Italian fruit grower, who obtained the propagation rights to the strain. Unlike other new cultivar strains, this one must meet strict market standards to carry that brand name. The strain was first identified due to its ability to produce fruit that were exceptionally well-colored and sweet. The strain, originally called Brak Fuji, must have a minimum sugar level of 16% Brix to qualify to be sold as Kiku. Most Fuji apple strains produce fruit that is around 12-13% Brix and they usually have less red color.

Hess Brothers sell apples from growers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Their latest release is WildTwist (Honeycrisp x Cripp's Pink) and matures toward the end of October. Since Hess Brothers pack apples from growers in New York they can also offer Ruby Frost and SnapDragon cultivars. SnapDragon (Honeycrisp x unknown parent) and Ruby Frost (Braeburn x Autumn Crisp) are two apple cultivars that were developed by Dr. Susan Brown of Cornell University. These two new varieties are the first introduced by Cornell under federal regulations approved in 1980 that allow public universities to be compensated for research and development. As mentioned, public universities developed apple cultivars and released them to the public for free. The two cultivars can only be grown in orchards in the state of New York.

Top Row, Left to Right: Ambrosia, Autumn Crisp, Cameo. Middle Row, Left to Right: Crimson Crisp, Cripp's Pink (Lady in Red), EverCrisp. Bottom Row, Left to Right: Gala Brookfield, Honeycrisp B11, Opal. Photos: Rob Crassweller, Penn State

While most of the cultivars listed in the table were designed or selected in university or private breeding programs a new cultivar development group was started in the mid-1990s. The Midwest Apple Improvement Association or MAIA was an organization that was founded by commercial apple growers and maintained by them to produce apple cultivars that are available to all U.S. and Canadian growers. The objective of the organization was to develop cultivars specifically for the Midwestern U.S. in an involved breeding program with research institutions and promote marketing of their cultivars. Any grower can join the association for an annual fee and the payment of a sliding age scale of royalties for the trees. The grower-members make the crosses, plant the seedlings, and evaluate the crosses and report their findings. Based on consensus, the Association will release the cultivars for other members and other interested growers to plant. Their current most popular cultivar is EverCrisp. They also have a number of other cultivars available to plant as well as some still in the early testing phase. At Penn State, we have EverCrisp, Summerset (MAIA12), Rosalee (MAIA11), and Ludacrisp (MAIA-L) planted and are under evaluation.

Photos: Rob Crassweller, Penn State

What Is On the Horizon?

Table 1 below shows the parentage of the new club cultivars. The first column shows the trademark or brand name. This would be what you would see on the label of the box or bag of apples. The second column is the original cultivar name. This is what the cultivar was patented as. The third column is the parentage of the cultivar. The first name is the female parent, what flower was pollinated. The second name is the male parent or the source of the pollen. In some cases, one of the parents may never have been patented or named. In that case within the parenthesis are the two cultivars that produced either the female or male source of flower or pollen. If the second parent is listed as Open Pollinated that indicates the male source of the pollen is unknown. This would occur in mixed cultivar orchard blocks where the fruit was gathered from the mother tree and those seeds were planted out to develop the new cultivar.

One thing you will notice in the table is that many of the new cultivars have Honeycrisp as one of their parents. Honeycrisp set the bar as to fruit quality. Besides university and research center breeding programs, there are many private breeders who are looking to develop the next Honeycrisp-like fruit. The fruit qualities breeders are looking for include a coarse, crunchy, juicy texture that 'explodes' with the first bite. Apple producers are looking for a cultivar that is more grower-friendly. While Honeycrisp has all the good eating characteristics that the public likes, it is a very difficult cultivar to grow. It tends to only produce a crop every other year, fruit size can be too large, fruit color is often inconsistent, and it is a weak growing tree. Finally, it is susceptible to physiological problems such as bitter pit and corking (fruit calcium deficiencies) and a short storage life due to the breakdown of the fruit.

Cosmic Crisp is the apple cultivar that producers in Washington State are bankrolling in the hope that it will replace Red Delicious and corner the market for the state's growers. This cultivar is just now showing up in markets after it was bred and developed by a Washington State University research team. The trees of this cultivar can only be planted by growers in Washington. Currently, it is estimated there are 12 million trees of this cultivar planted in the last 5 years. And it is estimated there were 2 million boxes for sale in 2020, with more than 21 million boxes anticipated by 2026. (Out of this world? New Cosmic Crisp apple set to debut)

A trend that has not yet reached some grocery chains is the development of red-fleshed apples such as Lucy Rose. These cultivars are being touted as having higher anthocyanin levels. We know that foods higher in anthocyanins have antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and other health benefits. The goal is to provide an incentive to purchase and eat more apples.

Large Eastern Fruit Packers

(Note: there are many smaller local fruit-packing companies)

• Applewood Fresh – Sparta, MI
• BelleHarvest – Belding, MI 
• Hess Brothers Fruit Company – Lancaster, PA 
• Honeybear Brands – Elgin, MN
• New York Apple Sales – Glenmont, NY
• Rice Fruit Company – Gardners, PA 

References

Information on patents and trademarks is listed below:

• The United States Patent and Trademark Office
• How Long Does Patent, Trademark, or Copyright Protection Last?
• Trademark General Help
• Trademark FAQs
• Trademark Basics

Introducing EverCrisp®

Orange Pippen: Orange Pippen is a website that lists over 700 apple cultivars. It provides good basic information about the origin use and characteristics of apple varieties.

Washington bets big on new Cosmic Crisp apple.