The Business of Breeding B.C. Apples
B.C.’s apple industry is in crisis. Are new apple breeds the solution? A team of scientists is scrambling to invent the perfect apple.
The 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 brown-hued 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.
The art of apple tasting
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.
Image: Adam Blasberg
Apples are sliced, cored and judged for taste and
appearance.
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 production. 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.
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