America’s New Favorite Apple, the Honeycrisp, Has a Problem
Bitter pit attacks Honeycrisps. But there might be a solution.
And with good reason; the Honeycrisp is a near-perfect raw apple. It is fantastically crisp, thanks to larger individual cells within its flesh, and it boasts a delicate sweet-tart balance and a light berry flavor. It looks great – bright crimson and a rich chartreuse – and stores well.
Since its introduction in 1991, the Honeycrisp has proven a huge success in the apple world. Today, it’s one of the top three apple varieties in the country in terms of volume, but is unusual among the other top-selling apples because it is sold at a premium. Honeycrisps sell for two to four times as much as the Gala, Granny Smith, or Fuji. That’s partly because people are willing to pay more, because the Honeycrisp is both good and well-known. But it’s also because the Honeycrisp can be a tricky crop: growers note that the tree itself is brittle and will sometimes try to produce too many (and thus smaller, less tasty) apples. Additionally, though it stores well, it must be handled gently, thanks to a very thin skin.
But the Honeycrisp also has a problem, and that problem is called bitter pit.
Bitter pit is a disorder known in all apple varieties that disproportionately affects Honeycrisps – usually, an average of 23 percent of them are affected, though in 2016, a study indicated that an insane 74 percent of Honeycrisps were affected. Bitter pit is a disease that reveals itself only well after picking, when the apple develops patches of black-brown dead spots. These are not dangerous to anyone eating the apple, but do make the fruit unappealing.
Honeycrisps are divided in the fall between apples that will be sold right away and apples that will be put in cold storage to be sold throughout the year. Now imagine this: Say you’re an apple farmer with a hundred apples, 50 of which go into storage and which 50 will be sold that week. Of those, 23 have bitter pit and though they may look perfect now, but those unsightly spots are going to start showing up in a few weeks. It’s lousy odds for the apple farmer: what if you pick the ones to go into storage that later develop bitter pit and can’t be sold?
Farmers want to sell any apples with bitter pit right away – customers will eat them and be very happy. But there hasn’t yet been a way to figure out which apples will develop bitter pit.
But now there may be an answer: A research group at Penn State – Pennsylvania grows the fourth-most apples in the country – figured out that a misbalance of certain minerals, especially a lack of calcium, indicates that an apple will later develop bitter pit. And they’ve also figured out a way to dry, powder, and test the peels from Honeycrisps weeks before harvest, which will allow farmers to decide which apples to sell right away and which to store. Seems like a minor thing, but could be the difference between a profitable harvest and a disastrous one.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].America’s New Favorite Apple, the Honeycrisp, Has a Problem
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
November 3, 2017
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
What has happened to the wonderful taste of a Honeycrisp apple????? Used to be sweet, juicy and crisp. I don’t even recognize the taste today!!!!!!!!!
why does the apple taste like “perfume” now. It’s not a good taste!
Sadly, the issue has not yet been resolved. What a bitter wang when you’re chewing! Yuck! I hope this is resolved soon! I don’t mind paying more for good apples but this is ridiculous and disappointing.
Thanks so much for the explanation and I trust the lab will find a “cure” for what ails my precious HoneyCrisps. Meanwhile, however, the “bitter pit” or whatever it is that has left the outside appearance the same while the eating experience, from skin to core, has become what children call “ycchy,” has not affected 23% of the apples I’ve just bought last week — It affected (infected?) all but one of a dozen. I’ve always been a one-apple person (the last was Fuji, which was doing just fine when I abandoned it), and that’s where I’m going back, unless… Read more »
Thank u