New Apple May Challenge Honeycrisp

New Apple May Challenge Honeycrisp CROPS New Crops Kudos is a new apple variety that has attributes likely to make it a winner The new apple is the result of crossing Honeycrisp and Zestar varieties according to David Bedford University of Minnesota apple breeder “Kudos has the crisp juicy flavor of a Honeycrisp and the rich flavor of a Zestar but with a slight tropical twist ” he says Bedford further describes it as a beautiful red apple a trait that’s almost as important to American consumers as taste and texture He has reason to admire the apple He’s been working with it for half of his 44-year career in the University’s apple development program It’s the latest in a program that has produced 29 new varieties over the past 103 years Bedford helped develop and introduce several very successful new apples among them Honeycrisp and Zestar Others include SweeTango and First Kiss/Rave In every case there’s a long time between the hand pollination of apple blossoms and the commercialization of a new variety “Hand pollinating an apple blossom increases the odds of getting a seed with the desired characteristics but you can’t control which genes are passed on ” says Bedford “Only 1 out of every 10 000 seeds from the same cross will be good enough to be released as a new variety someday ” Apples are heterozygous Unlike vegetable seeds which will reproduce uniformly apple seeds are all different Even full sisters like SweeTango and Kudos are completely different apples “You could plant a million seeds from Honeycrisp apples and never get a Honeycrisp ” says Bedford Like its parents and full and half-siblings Kudos survived 20+ years of review That’s just the halfway point It’s now in the hands of licensing nurseries who’ll produce trees over the next couple of years to sell to orchards “Once they’ve been planted it’ll be 2 to 4 years before apples are available for sale to the public ” says Bedford That begins the real test for a new variety Bedford recalls tasting Honeycrisp when it was still being evaluated and he was fresh out of graduate school “It was so far out of the norm that I couldn’t compare it to other apples ” he says “It didn’t take me long to figure out that it must be good However even after it was introduced it took another 8 to 10 years to see if the public agreed Honeycrisp is now the benchmark for texture ” Today Honeycrisp is considered the most popular apple in the U S Bedford notes that it’s still considered a relatively new variety even though it’s more than 60 years old It’s been available to the public for 30 years Time will tell if Kudos will prove as popular Contact: FARM SHOW Followup David Bedford University of Minnesota Dept of Horticultural Science 305 Alderman Hall 1970 Folwell Ave St Paul Minn 55108 ph 612-301-1823; bedfo001@umn edu; www mnhardy umn edu/apples

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