test
taste
the
of
B.C.’s apple industry is in
crisis. Are new apple breeds
the solution? a team of
scientists are scrambling
to invent the perfect apple
T
Okanagan Tree Fruit
Cooperative packing
house, Oliver, B.C.
52 BCBusiness February 2012
he paring knives cut into the flesh swiftly. Chrrrack.
Crunch crunch crunch. The hallway of the open work area on the second floor
of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre
(PARC) in Summerland fills with the sound of chewing as the tasters contemplate what has just met their taste buds.
“Pass or fail?” asks Cheryl Hampson, apple-breeding research scientist.
Apple 8S 54 60 sits in a green plastic crate awaiting sentence. “I say unless it’s
got bigger flavour, with that appearance it’s not going anywhere,” comments
research technician Darrell-Lee McKenzie. She drags the crate of brownhued apples to join the compost pile. I ask Hampson, who has dedicated 16
years of her career to breeding the perfect apple, what makes for a winner.
“That’s entirely in the tongue of the beholder,” the petite middle-aged scientist
answers before breaking into a trill of laughter.
It’s early winter here in Summerland and a biting wind makes Lake Okanagan look more like Loch Ness. The only relic of the warm summer sun that
bathes these slopes is the fruit before us. Armed with knife and spittoon, the
pre-tasting panel is mercilessly thinning the pack. Of the 21 crates of apple varieties before us, only six will go on to blind taste tests that evaluate their skin
toughness, crispiness, juiciness, sweetness, sourness and flavour intensity.
by Anne Casselman // photography by Adam Blasberg
February 2012 BCBusiness 53
In order for an apple to even meet the consumer,
it has to be disease- and pest-resistant, and able to
handle the rigours of a changing climate. It must
taste fresh months after picking and go
on to survive navigating the packing house.
It must travel, stack and sell well
tested to the core:
Apples are sliced, cored
and judged for taste and
appearance (below);
Cheryl Hampson and Ken
Haddrell, power couple of
the apple industry (right)
54 BCBusiness February 2012
To make it, a new apple has to be the
best apple you’ve ever eaten. Literally.
“Because we are trying to beat what’s out
there, to get a new apple on the market it
has to be pretty darn good,” says McKenzie. When apple researchers reel off
potential apple flaws, it’s like listening to
your girlfriend damn all her online dating
prospects. They’re too fat. Their colouring
is off. They have too many freckles. They
have a calcium deficiency that leaves black
splotches on their skin. And you know all
bets are off when they leave a bad aftertaste in your mouth. To be fair, these horticulturalists taste apples for two to four
hours a day throughout the winter months.
(One retired PARC employee boasts that he
has tasted over a million apples in his life.)
So it’s not just that their palates are jaded.
Their tooth enamel is starting to erode and
their stomach acid is spiking.
Outside the walls of PARC,
B.C.’s apple industry is in deep crisis as its
growers continue to bleed money. In the
past three years, apple growers on average
have failed to make their costs of produc-
tion. In the past year, on average, growers
pocketed 17.2 cents a pound for apples that
cost them 22.5 cents a pound to grow. Small
wonder that apple trees are being replaced
by cherries and wine grapes. At one point,
20,000 acres of apples carpeted the Okanagan. That number’s down to 8,500 today
and continues to shrink.
“One does not have to be an economist
to realize that that situation is simply not
sustainable and so we’ve got to find a way
to turn this around,” says Joe Sardinha,
president of the B.C. Fruit Growers’ Association. The stakes are considerable. Apples
are Canada’s largest fruit crop in terms
of tonnage, and its second most valuable
agricultural crop. B.C. alone grows over a
billion apples each year and apple growing
in B.C.’s Interior contributes around $720
million to the economy annually.
One school of thought is to breed our
way out of the mess, since newer, better
apple varieties can be more profitable. The
Ambrosia apple, a flagship B.C. breed, is a
price leader. This year, growers got exactly
a quarter for each pound of Ambrosias
grown. They pocket 36.1 cents a pound for
the top earner, Pink Lady. But Macintosh,
Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Spartan,
Fuji and Golden Delicious, which make
up 44.5 per cent of B.C.’s apple crop, lost
growers money. The Spartan, PARC’s first
success as the only apple breed produced
from a formal scientific breeding program
at the time, is yesterday’s news. Growers
get a measly 12.4 cents a pound for it. Even
Galas, the yellow labs of apples, cost growers a penny a pound to grow.
Whether Hampson’s varieties will offer
salvation for an industry headed deep into
the red, thanks to a strong Canadian dollar
and competitors in Washington that have
economies of scale working for them, is a
multi-million-dollar question. With Washington state eclipsing B.C.’s apple production by a factor of 30 (we grow four million
40-pound cartons a year. They’re at 120
anne casselman (left)
million), many in the business believe
adopting new varieties is the only way forward. “I don’t think we can really compete
head on head with Washington state,” says
Jim Campbell, industry specialist with the
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture. “We have to
do something different . . . get out of the old
rut, try something new.”
New apples that taste better, are easier
to grow and store longer can offer growers
a competitive and financial edge. “What
you’re offering the grower is an opportubcbusinessonline.ca
nity to realize more net return per acre,
whether it’s a return per pound to him or
by better production or a better pack-out,”
says Ken Haddrell, operations manager at
the Okanagan Plant Improvement Corp.,
known in the industry by its acronym,
PICO. (Haddrell and Hampson are married,
making them the closest thing to a power
couple in the apple world.)
PICO, which got started in 1993 with
funding from the federal government and
the B.C. Tree Fruit Growers’ Association,
February 2012 BCBusiness 55
safeguards the intellectual property rights
of plant-breeders, and licenses and commercializes B.C.-developed fruit varieties.
It returns a percentage of its fruit royalties to the receiver general for Canada and
reinvests any other profits (if any) into the
Okanagan fruit growing industry.
In order for an apple to even meet the
consumer, it has to be disease- and pestresistant, and able to handle the rigours
of a changing climate. It must taste fresh
months after picking and go on to survive navigating the packing house. It
must travel, stack and sell well.
assembly line: At
the Okanagan Tree Fruit
Cooperative packing
house in Oliver, each
apple is photographed
digitally 10 times from
all angles, then washed,
hoovered, waxed and
stickered before being
packaged for shipment
to retailers
The entire process of developing a
brand-new cultivar from seed to
farm-testing takes about 15 years,
which means that apple researchers
have to read into the apple
trends of 2030 today
The thing is, some people believe that
Hampson has already bred the holy grail
of apples, the Aurora. Its pale green countenance belies a burst of juicy flesh, whose
sapidity is graced with lychee and elderflower notes. It’s got enough crunch to last
from the first bite to your back teeth. “The
internal qualities of this apple, the taste, the
pressure, the storage capability are second
to none,” says Rob Smith, founder of BerryMobile Fruit Distribution Inc. in Vancouver.
“Put against any apple in a blind taste test,
it’s never been beat.” What went wrong?
Well, for starters, upon meeting the Aurora,
the head of PARC at the time had a better
name for it: I wish I were red.
In 1981, researchers at PARC
crossed two red apples, Splendour and
Gala. It was a good piece of matchmaking.
Twenty years later, and their progeny’s stars
are still rising. The Nicola, just entering the
market, came out of that cross. So did its
sibling, Aurora. Likewise with SPA 493, a bicoloured apple that is being farm-tested.
There are two things you need to understand about apples. First, an apple is not an
apple. “A cherry is a cherry, an apricot is an
apricot; for that matter a peach is a peach,”
says Haddrell. “But apples? Apples are sold
by name.” Second, apples are a lot like racehorses. Their bloodlines matter and the
56 BCBusiness February 2012
pack that they’re racing against is faster
and stronger than ever. (Even their names
read like a racing program. As the offspring
of Splendour and Gala, which itself is begat
by Golden Delicious, Aurora’s full name is
Aurora Golden Gala.)
The entire process of developing a
brand-new cultivar from seed to farm-testing takes about 15 years, which means that
apple researchers have to read into the
apple trends of 2030 today (known apple
trends thus far: solid-coloured apples are
out of mode; those with a red blush fare
best; Eastern Canada likes its apples more
tart than Western Canada).
PARC’s 90 hectares of orchard are home
to a rotating population of 30,000 new
apple varieties (which is to say that apple
varieties outnumber Summerland citizens
five to one). Each year Hampson and her
colleagues patrol the rows of apples, highgrading about 800 to be evaluated by the
pre-tasting panel. Each row of apple siblings
is a dizzying farrago of colours: red, orange,
carmen, pink, maroon, purple, pale yellow,
lemon yellow, rust. They come speckled,
striped, solid, blotchy, freckled, squat,
ribbed, heart-shaped. There are apples that
taste like pink lemonade, apples that taste
of dirty sock (that one in particular traumabcbusinessonline.ca
tized McKenzie; she never looks at a purplish apple with white lenticels the same
since). Everything that an apple ever could
be, it probably is somewhere on-site.
The odds of finding a winner are slim.
It’s estimated that one plant in 60,000 to
100,000 is good enough to make it. “They’re
like people,” says Hampson, whose jollity is
often punctuated by a peal of laughter. “I
haven’t run across one yet that’s flawless.”
To visit a fruit-packing house, where
50,000 apples are sorted to within an inch
of their lives every hour, is to take the
romance out of eating an apple. “We take
the fruit from the orchard and put it into
a box so that it can get to our customer,”
Cam Stewart, assistant plant manager at
the Okanagan Tree Fruit Cooperative
packing house in Oliver, shouts over the
din. “We make sure that all the bad apples
along the way are removed.”
What this looks like is a several-hundred-metre-long apple obstacle course.
Each apple is washed, bathed, plucked,
rolled, brushed, photographed 10 times
digitally from all angles, herded into a
flute of water, hoovered, stored, waxed and
stickered. The end result is boxes of apples
categorized into as many as 27 different
groups of size and quality.
This might sound like overkill, but the
February 2012 BCBusiness 57
ready to roll: B.C.
produces four million
40-pound cartons of
apples a year, almost
all of them coming
from the Okanagan and
Similkameen valleys.
Here they await shipment
at the Okanagan Tree
Fruit Cooperative packing
house in Oliver
Down in the turquoise Convair
walk-in coolers at PARC, research scientist
Peter Toivonen is running storage experiments that he believes will mark Aurora’s
redemption. Apples are kept in controlled
atmosphere chambers after they are
picked, to increase their longevity. By
keeping the apples cool in a chamber with
low oxygen, no nitrogen, and a ripening
inhibitor, the apples enter a state of suspended animation. That’s how consumers
get fresh apples all year round.
market demands it. “The grading standards have gotten a lot more strict over
the years,” says Stewart. “The customer’s
looking for a better apple for their money.
So the Safeways of the world are expecting
a lot tighter criteria for their fruit.”
A couple of years ago the packing house
gave Aurora a try. The fruit weren’t thinned
right and were barely larger than PingPong balls. Worse, the thin-skinned Aurora
bruised badly as it went down the line. “We
did think that we did have a winner with
the Aurora,” says BCFGA’s Sardinha. “But it
has some cosmetic problems.”
“Most of [the growers] have grafted
it over because the packing house gave
it the thumbs down,” says Hampson. In
the Okanagan, 85 per cent of apples go
through the packing houses and an apple
is doomed without their blessing. As a clipping pinned on Hampson’s bulletin board
reads, “A failure will not appear until a unit
has passed final inspection.”
There’s a long list of apples that never
made it. From PARC alone, there’s the Spencer, Creston, Shamrock, Silken, Sumac,
Sinta, Chinook – the list goes on. While
the Aurora isn’t relegated to the scrap heap
quite yet, the fact that it faltered so badly
at the gate has been damning. And then
there was the colour handicap. “It would
be a world-dominating apple if it was red,
58 BCBusiness February 2012
“If we can get our big packing
houses to look at the Aurora as
not an inconvenience but as
a future star, then maybe with
that attitude it would get more
traction” – Rob Smith
but it’s yellow,” says Smith. The Aurora’s
grandparent, the mushy Golden Delicious,
can be thanked for that.
Apples used to only come in three
colors. “Green ones are sour, yellow
ones are soft and red ones are sweet,”
says Haddrell. But then in the ’80s things
changed. “Fuji, Gala, Braeburn – they
sort of raised the eating quality bar and
suddenly the old Red Delicious didn’t
seem so good anymore,” says Hampson.
Today yet another generation of apples
has moved in, including Ambrosias, Pink
Ladies and the Honeycrisp, an eastern
variety developed by the Minnesota
Agricultural Experiment Station’s Horticultural Research Center.
Aurora still has its champions. Many
growers swear by it and stores including
Whole Foods, Choices, Nestors and the
IGA at 41st and Dunbar see its value and
will stock it. Meanwhile Auvil Fruit Co.
Inc. in Orondo, Washington, is licensed
to grow it. Auvil has 80 acres of Aurora
trees, which produced 38,000 boxes this
year. Next year the grower will increase
Aurora’s footprint to 100 acres (bear in
mind the average apple farm in B.C. is 10
acres). “We like to try to be ahead of the
curve with something exciting,” says Ray
Norwood, a sales representative at Auvil
Fruit. “After trying it and seeing how it
tasted . . . it turns out that it’s got delicious
eating qualities.”
The fact that Aurora is meeting warm
reception in the States speaks volumes
to Vancouver’s Rob Smith, and it drives
him a bit nutty: “If we can get our big
packing houses to look at the Aurora
as not an inconvenience but as a future
star, then maybe with that attitude it
would get more traction.”
bcbusinessonline.ca
This past February Toivonen ran
taste tests on Aurora and SPA 493 that
had been in cold storage (apple lingo for
a very cold fridge) for five months. These
apples weren’t sent into hibernation using
controlled atmosphere, and there were
no expensive ripening inhibitors. They
were simply put in a cold dark room and
left there for months on end. And they
tasted great. This year Toivonen is pushing their storage potential even further, to
eight months. “When I put one of them in
a cold room for eight months and I don’t
see them change, that’s something to get
excited about. I don’t know of any other
apples that do that,” he says, eyes alight.
A variety that needs only a cold room to
last for months shifts the cost factors of
growing apples and the sustainability of
the industry, Toivonen explains. “It could
change the whole story.” n
February 2012 BCBusiness 59