Speaker 1: Hello, it's that landscape artwork you made at a paint
Speaker 1: and sip event six years ago. Ali Ward, and Hey,
Speaker 1: it's fall, it's creepy, it's spooky, it's apples. Listen. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got scarier subjects coming up this month, but I thought,
Speaker 1: after a two parter on which culture, we needed to
Speaker 1: lace up our worn up leather boots, wear a scarf,
Speaker 1: and even though it's too hot for it, head to
Speaker 1: an imaginary orchard to chat with someone who's about to
Speaker 1: narrate every apple experience you have for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. I love her so. She's a professor at
Speaker 1: the School of Integrative Plant Science Horticulture at Cornell University.
Speaker 1: She got a bachelor's and a master's in plant science
Speaker 1: and a PhD in genetics, and now leads Cornell's apple
Speaker 1: breeding program, one of the largest fruit breeding programs in
Speaker 1: the world. And we're going to get to it. But first,
Speaker 1: thank you so much to everyone wearing news spooktober Ologies,
Speaker 1: merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thanks to all the patrons
Speaker 1: supporting and submitting questions at patreon dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 1: and to the folks who leave reviews. Everyone such as
Speaker 1: this ripe juicy submission from Georgie Corkory, who wrote ologies
Speaker 1: is the embodiment of nerds are cool. In fact, this
Speaker 1: pod highlights that nerds are thrilling, diverse, sexy, wholesome, and quirky.
Speaker 1: Georgie and the rest of us pig dorks, thank you
Speaker 1: for those reviews. We are all of those things, and
Speaker 1: those reviews really make my day and they help the
Speaker 1: podcast so much. I read them all, So keep in comming. Okay.
Speaker 1: Palmology it's a real word, and it's a discipline, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes from the Latin palm for fruit, and it
Speaker 1: can be applied to the whole branch of botany that
Speaker 1: involves edible things. But pomology is typically used when talking
Speaker 1: about apples. And this expert is as knowledgeable and as
Speaker 1: charming as they come. So get ready for apple picking tips,
Speaker 1: genetic mashups, taste test requirements, tart versus sour versus astringent,
Speaker 1: wild apples versus domesticated, recipe tips, Oxidation, anticipation and frustration
Speaker 1: in the Nation, DNA trivia, compost treasures, maggot babies, The
Speaker 1: animal dung that changed History. How to have your own orchard,
Speaker 1: The Sweet, Sweet taste of scientific redemption, keeping doctors away,
Speaker 1: the loudest apple crunch on record, and what you're actually
Speaker 1: tasting when you enjoy this feat of breeding with Professor
Speaker 1: fruit geneticist and pomologist, doctor Susan K.
Speaker 2: Brown.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk to you. Of all the
Speaker 1: apple experts in the world, I was most excited to
Speaker 1: talk to you. So when you said yes, I was
Speaker 1: over the moon. I was like, yes, this is great.
Speaker 1: So thank you for making time, especially during the harvest
Speaker 1: or apple season, at least I think it is.
Speaker 2: But it's harvest season and my daughter gets married a
Speaker 2: week from tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Okay, we'll make this quick.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, it's okay. It's okay.
Speaker 1: So she's having a fall wedding.
Speaker 2: Yes, which everybody said that that would be mutiny in
Speaker 2: their family, but you know why, it's your only daughter.
Speaker 2: You say, okay, not good timing, but we'll do it.
Speaker 1: Is she a fall person?
Speaker 2: I think everybody is when you're in upstate because it's
Speaker 2: so beautiful here.
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure, being from you know, southern California where
Speaker 1: we have essentially like one and a half seasons. I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure when apple harvesting actually is. I want to
Speaker 1: say it's around now because that's when we used to
Speaker 1: go to apple farms and orchard roe Kid in northern California.
Speaker 1: But when is like pick and season?
Speaker 2: Okay, so it can start as early as August, but commercial,
Speaker 2: you know, people really don't usually go to the orchards
Speaker 2: until September. But the peak, the big weekend is Columbus
Speaker 2: Day weekend.
Speaker 1: Just a side out in the US. This is usually
Speaker 1: the second Monday in October. And the holiday was started
Speaker 1: to honor Italian American heritage. About twenty years ago. People
Speaker 1: were like, how do we feel about Christopher Columbus? Not good?
Speaker 1: Got it? And many cities started swapping the holiday out
Speaker 1: for Indigenous People's Day. But Columbus, Ohio really could go
Speaker 1: anywhere with the day, and so they've decided to honor veterans.
Speaker 1: What is my damn point that no one has made
Speaker 1: another mid October holiday all about apples? Boy, howdy, I
Speaker 1: reckon we need one.
Speaker 2: And that's when the bumper sales are out. But we
Speaker 2: have just so many different apple festivals, red side stands,
Speaker 2: large producers, and so you know, wherever you go, you
Speaker 2: can't turn around without seeing an apple orchard.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up like going to field trips and
Speaker 1: things in orchards? I know I did, and that it
Speaker 1: became a magical place.
Speaker 2: We didn't so much because we didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of apple orchards where I grow up, but of course
Speaker 2: my dad had the apple trees, and my mom's family
Speaker 2: wasn't farming, so you know, we were exposed to it.
Speaker 2: But what a bad story. My kids were little and
Speaker 2: they came home and they said, Mom, we went an
Speaker 2: apple or trood and we had cider when we picked
Speaker 2: apples from the trees. And my husband said, shame on you.
Speaker 1: Because you had them, or just because because.
Speaker 2: We had them. But you know, we're so busy and
Speaker 2: you're so overwhelmed with apples that the last thing you
Speaker 2: think of doing is taking your kids out. So after
Speaker 2: that we started making sure that they were always out,
Speaker 2: and little kids just liked to be able to bite
Speaker 2: into an apple, throw it to the ground, and try
Speaker 2: another one.
Speaker 1: How did you end up doing this as a job.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of people get to right immerse themselves
Speaker 1: at orchards and varieties and plants right fruit.
Speaker 2: So my mom was an amazing green thumb, so we
Speaker 2: always had a lot of flowers. My dad had a
Speaker 2: big vegetable garden, so my mom started the fascination with plants,
Speaker 2: because they really are just amazing. And then my dad
Speaker 2: bred racing pigeons of all things, so homing pigeons will
Speaker 2: always come home, but especially in Connecticut and other areas,
Speaker 2: they will take the pigeons, put them on a truck,
Speaker 2: drive them several hundred miles away, and then there's a
Speaker 2: lever that lets them all off at the same time,
Speaker 2: and you bet on whether your pigeons will come back
Speaker 2: before others. But he taught me about the genetics of
Speaker 2: you know, different patterns and some of the things that
Speaker 2: you look for, and he would talk about selection. So
Speaker 2: he would say, see them flying, the last one is
Speaker 2: a little weak, and sure enough a hawk would come
Speaker 2: and get it, which was a kind of a terrifying
Speaker 2: lesson for a young child, but you know, so that
Speaker 2: was really great. And then my brother was a science teacher,
Speaker 2: and I was always around nature. But when I went
Speaker 2: to the University of Connecticut and took my first botany course,
Speaker 2: I fell in love. And then I took my first
Speaker 2: plant breeding course and I realized that I could create something,
Speaker 2: and I could create something that no one else had
Speaker 2: ever seen, but even more importantly, with fruit that no
Speaker 2: one else had ever tasted.
Speaker 1: The snosberries taste like snosberries.
Speaker 2: So my predecessor said that being an apple breeder is
Speaker 2: like being an explorer and an unknown land. So when
Speaker 2: you bite into an apple that you created, it may
Speaker 2: be the world's best apple, or it may be what
Speaker 2: we referred to as the spitters. You created it and
Speaker 2: to be able to, you know, do something that no
Speaker 2: one else has done, and you know a lot of
Speaker 2: times it isn't a success, but when it is, boy,
Speaker 2: is that gratifying?
Speaker 1: Do you have to wait years before you know if
Speaker 1: something's delicious or a spitter?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 1: Oh, that is so much patience. How do you cultivate
Speaker 1: that much patience?
Speaker 2: No, it's more impatients, I think. So we learned ways
Speaker 2: to make it quicker. So if I talk to somebody
Speaker 2: that works in tomatoes, they're like, oh my god, it
Speaker 2: takes so long. But it used to take twenty to
Speaker 2: more like forty years to where a variety you thought
Speaker 2: might be successful. And I was like, I can't you know?
Speaker 2: You could retire before you know you're any good. And
Speaker 2: so I started looking at ways to use certain parents
Speaker 2: to make fruit occur quicker, to do cultural conditions to
Speaker 2: make them come into fruit, to use dwarfing rootstocks which
Speaker 2: allow them to produce fruit sooner.
Speaker 1: More on rootstocks in a bit is bananas is apples.
Speaker 2: And so with the case of New York wan Ers Snapdragon,
Speaker 2: one of our releases, it was the fastest from cross
Speaker 2: to commercialization. I think it was eleven years and that's
Speaker 2: still a long time, but that's cutting it by decades.
Speaker 1: Holy smokes. Are you able to say, like, I worked
Speaker 1: on this apple and this apple and this apple. Do
Speaker 1: you have like a running list in your head?
Speaker 2: Of course, but the two that are receiving the most
Speaker 2: attention right now are Snapdragon and Ruby Frost. And Snapdragon
Speaker 2: in particular is the only, I think, official apple of
Speaker 2: an NFL team. So it's the official apple of the
Speaker 2: Buffalo Bills.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean that's that is cool. So we
Speaker 2: are going to have a documentary out that is through
Speaker 2: Viewpoint and Dennis Quaid moderates it. But they videoed us
Speaker 2: from the idea of making that variety to the marketing
Speaker 2: that was involved and our marketing group has won many
Speaker 2: different awards. Snapdragon just recently won an award for Outstanding
Speaker 2: for Cultivar from my professional society, which is the American
Speaker 2: Society for Horticultural Sciences, and the name recognition. They really
Speaker 2: did such a nice job tying in the s Dragon
Speaker 2: logo a tagline monster Crunch. So we're doing it. It's
Speaker 2: a lot different, and in the past we didn't have
Speaker 2: money for marketing.
Speaker 1: And one thing that their marketing department did not count
Speaker 1: on was some weird lady with a niche podcast emailing
Speaker 1: to ask their mad scientist fruit highness to talk about
Speaker 1: her apples and not having a single Snapdragon apple in
Speaker 1: front of me. Woefully, I had to comb the internet
Speaker 1: for descriptions, which have included spicy sweet, a hint of vanilla,
Speaker 1: crisp flesh, exceptional juiciness, and monster crunch. So how many
Speaker 1: people have to grow a new apple before it's market ready? Like,
Speaker 1: who has backstage access to new apples?
Speaker 2: So this was a closed release something called a club,
Speaker 2: but every grower in New York State had the opportunity
Speaker 2: to join. And then we stipulated that twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of the pro seeds had to go to marketing, and
Speaker 2: that's made all the difference.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask who is behind big Apple
Speaker 1: if it takes eleven years for a quicker version to
Speaker 1: make it to market, Like who pays for the recon
Speaker 1: Is there like an Apple council?
Speaker 2: Oh no. So Cornell University has been very generous about
Speaker 2: supporting my program, but it has become more challenging. There's
Speaker 2: only three major apple university programs in the US, and
Speaker 2: you contrast that with like Japan, and every province has
Speaker 2: their own an apple breeder. We used to in the past.
Speaker 2: Even as early as the nineteen seventies, there was a
Speaker 2: breeder in almost every state.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering how many provinces does Japan have, like
Speaker 1: seven or one hundred? Welcome to being me anyway, Japan
Speaker 1: forty seven prefectures. But if you're wondering how many ancient
Speaker 1: provinces were in Japan, there were sixty nine. But back
Speaker 1: to apples. So Cornell's made quite a history in the
Speaker 1: apple world, and they support a lot of agriculture research
Speaker 1: of this ILK and the breeding programs are also funded
Speaker 1: by the New York apple growers, who all tax themselves
Speaker 1: and then they pitch in for research, and Susan says
Speaker 1: that one group of growers called crunch Time Apples got
Speaker 1: together the marketing for Snapdragon, even though they all have
Speaker 1: full time jobs getting apples to your fruit baskets and
Speaker 1: your sack lunches.
Speaker 2: But they were confident in the varieties, and they were
Speaker 2: confident in our program and the data that we had.
Speaker 2: And it's been a wonderful partnership. I mean it's just
Speaker 2: we we kit around a lot. But to see drone
Speaker 2: footage of some of our packing houses and the people
Speaker 2: and to hear customers say that's my favorite apple just
Speaker 2: doesn't get better than the.
Speaker 1: Who gets to name it? Because Snapdragons such a good name,
Speaker 1: Like do you have to vote?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, we were able to have input, but in
Speaker 2: the past we used to name we the breeder or
Speaker 2: the universe used to name the apple. And I will
Speaker 2: tell you that it's hard to name something because you
Speaker 2: can't name it if it's been used before. And there
Speaker 2: are on record over fourteen thousand names. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: So you know we're going to start becoming like the
Speaker 2: pharmacy Xyz or Exulta. But when I first heard the
Speaker 2: name Snapdragon, I was like, that's a flower, because you know,
Speaker 2: I'm in horticulture. But then they showed the logo and
Speaker 2: they showed the taglines, and it resonates with kids and
Speaker 2: it's very memorable. So that was one where they suggested
Speaker 2: several different names, and a grower, Mark Russell, really felt
Speaker 2: that snapdragon was the best name, and he led a
Speaker 2: campaign to make that be the case. And then ruby
Speaker 2: Frost is a good name, but it just doesn't resonate
Speaker 2: as well. A friend of mine, the Minnesota breeder, came
Speaker 2: up with honey crisp, and that was a great name
Speaker 2: because it's sweet and it's crisp. But then so many people,
Speaker 2: people myself included, started using crisp that a group from
Speaker 2: Ohio that has a private program they called an apple ludacrisps.
Speaker 1: When you see that, you've got to be like, that's
Speaker 1: got to be the crispiest, just that it's so out there,
Speaker 1: right you're wondering about other apple names. I was too,
Speaker 1: and to the point that I scrolled through a list
Speaker 1: of several several hundred to find the ones that might
Speaker 1: tickle us. And even though it was past my bedtime,
Speaker 1: I kept scrolling through because there are so many tasty
Speaker 1: little treats such as hoary Morning, Northern spy, Cocklee, Pippin, Flushing, Spitzenberg, sakm, Girdle,
Speaker 1: Sleeping Beauty, Ronk, Dazzle, Bloody, Plowman, Cheese, just Cheese, scrumptious, pumpkin,
Speaker 1: sweet pit Mason, pineapple, scarlet, cranberry, sac and sugar one
Speaker 1: named water. There's also poorthhouse and Rambo. So next time
Speaker 1: you need to name a pet, or a car or
Speaker 1: a firstborn, look no further than a big ass list
Speaker 1: of unhinged heirloom apple names. Speaking of which, let's go
Speaker 1: back in time. Well, you know a huge question I
Speaker 1: have is Johnny Appleseed a legend, a myth? Knowing what
Speaker 1: little I know about apples, I understand you cannot just
Speaker 1: throw seeds down and all these different apple varieties will
Speaker 1: sprout up, right.
Speaker 2: Right, There's a book that's really good, and I think
Speaker 2: it's called Johnny Appleseed, the Man, the myth, the legend.
Speaker 2: So Johnny Appleseed became glamorized by Disney and some of
Speaker 2: the books that were written kids books about him. But
Speaker 2: there really was that gentleman, except he used apple seeds.
Speaker 2: So when you cut open an apple, so if it's
Speaker 2: nap Dragon or Empire or whatever your favorite apple is.
Speaker 2: When you cut open the apple, those seeds have let's
Speaker 2: say Empire as the parent, but fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: genes come from whatever the be brought in as pollen.
Speaker 2: Could be a crab apple, it could be golden, delicious,
Speaker 2: it could be delicious, it could be any number of things.
Speaker 2: And sometimes even seeds within the apple have different combinations appearance.
Speaker 2: And so that's why when you plant an apple seed,
Speaker 2: you don't get that variety. You get a descendant of it,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to be anywhere near that same variety.
Speaker 2: So the only way that you can make a genetic
Speaker 2: copy of an apple tree is to use clonal propagation.
Speaker 2: That's where you take a bud or a piece of
Speaker 2: fruiting wood and you put it on a rootstock. It's
Speaker 2: like making a genetic xerox or copy of that tree.
Speaker 2: And so each bud is a genetic replica. And if
Speaker 2: you use one hundred buds, you'll get a hundred trees
Speaker 2: and they're all the same as that original seedling. So
Speaker 2: when you think about it, Macintosh was discovered in the
Speaker 2: seventeen hundreds. Every tree that's been propagated, dates back to
Speaker 2: that original ancestor.
Speaker 1: Whoa are all the snapdragons that you might find do
Speaker 1: they come from a single tree that really had the
Speaker 1: best traits?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, so they do and they don't. So the
Speaker 2: first tree started everything. You have a first generation, you
Speaker 2: have a second generation, but the original source of it.
Speaker 2: It's like when they do those anthropology studies, you know,
Speaker 2: the Eve is that original tree.
Speaker 1: And this refers to a matrilineal line of ancestry or
Speaker 1: the so called mitochondrial Eve of African origin that researchers
Speaker 1: date back to between one hundred and forty and two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago. Journalists kind of coined that biblical
Speaker 1: term because it made headlines. But Alan Wilson, a biochemist
Speaker 1: who co founded the theory, did not like the reference
Speaker 1: to an eve character, and he preferred the term lucky mother,
Speaker 1: which I think is more sweet and crisp. But on
Speaker 1: this topic, let's kick it back to the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Let me go back to what you had asked about
Speaker 2: Johnny Appleseed. Yeah, okay, So Johnny Appleseed was interesting in that,
Speaker 2: rather than bringing buds or trees to the colonists. He
Speaker 2: was bringing apple seeds because he could get them from
Speaker 2: a sidary. So when you presh cider, the apple seeds
Speaker 2: are left, they have bags of them. He would collect
Speaker 2: those bags, and he was a shrewd businessman, so he
Speaker 2: would find a piece of land he would plant those seeds,
Speaker 2: and now he is having a combination of trees that
Speaker 2: aren't named varieties, but he can give to settlers very inexpensively.
Speaker 2: He did that to spread the word of the Sweden's
Speaker 2: Borough religion. Oh and interestingly, Johnny Appleseed thought it was
Speaker 2: morally wrong to graft two different trees together. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but he did, and so he used the
Speaker 2: seeds as a way to get his foot in the
Speaker 2: door and then to try to spread the word of
Speaker 2: his religion.
Speaker 1: Well, so where did they come from before colonists in America?
Speaker 2: Okay, so great question. The original origin of apple is
Speaker 2: in the northern China, Kazakhstan, in other parts of the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Just a tiny bit of history here. So the apples
Speaker 1: you're eating are malice domestica, unless you're foraging in the
Speaker 1: valleys of Kazakhstan, where wild apples malice cier versii still
Speaker 1: dangle from one hundred year old trees, some are several
Speaker 1: stories high, and wild apples there very completely from tree
Speaker 1: to tree, because remember the pollination of apples is a
Speaker 1: total crapshoot, depending on what a bee brings in from
Speaker 1: its butt. So the wild apple sizes and textures and
Speaker 1: tastes are all over the But evolutionarily the local bears
Speaker 1: preferred the sweetest, biggest ones, and they would clamber up
Speaker 1: trees before the winter to get them, kind of naturally
Speaker 1: pruning the trees with these giant, hungry claws, and then
Speaker 1: they would leave with bellies full of apple seed to
Speaker 1: disperse like confetti as they lumbered toward hibernation. So those
Speaker 1: seeds tend to grown to bigger, tastier apples, which the
Speaker 1: horses love. And guess what sweet pooping beasts people rode
Speaker 1: along the Silk Road. Well, camels, but also horses who
Speaker 1: love apples. Now, this Great Silk Road was a network
Speaker 1: of trade routes and it stretched over four thousand miles
Speaker 1: between the coast east of now Beijing, through China, India, Iran, Turkey,
Speaker 1: North Africa, and Russia into eastern Europe. And this series
Speaker 1: of sandy and hilly and foresty highways were the way
Speaker 1: to go for fifteen hundred years up until about six
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. And just like we have flying j
Speaker 1: truck stops to buy thirty two ouncers of Bajab blast,
Speaker 1: the Silk Road had inns and stops and they were
Speaker 1: called caravansaries. You just stop along the way four thousand
Speaker 1: miles that has so many pea breaks, no drive through burritos,
Speaker 1: no podcasts, just your camel named Gary and some guy
Speaker 1: curtain a barrel of buttons who's telling the same story
Speaker 1: about the time he fought a drunk goat and the
Speaker 1: goat won. That is a long road.
Speaker 2: And then they traveled by the Silk Route to Europe.
Speaker 2: But each time they were traveling, if seeds were dropped
Speaker 2: or if animals like horses ate them, they would Germany
Speaker 2: and then they would cross with species. So that's a
Speaker 2: relative of apple in that region. And so we called
Speaker 2: that introgression. So if you've done an ancestry and me,
Speaker 2: if you look at the apple, you can see the
Speaker 2: different areas that it was colonized in. And then when
Speaker 2: the settlers came to North America in pursuit of religious
Speaker 2: freedom and hopefully wealth. They brought seeds with them. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they brought trees, but the trees from the UK and
Speaker 2: other places weren't adapted to America. So when the colonists
Speaker 2: came here, they found several different native apples. But the
Speaker 2: native apples are tiny, little crab apples, and as the
Speaker 2: Row explained, they were sour enough to make a jaybird scream.
Speaker 2: So sometimes they cross pollinated with some of the seeds
Speaker 2: that the colonists brought. But at that time people were
Speaker 2: using seeds and apples as a source of safe drinking
Speaker 2: material and not necessarily hardsider. The water had problems with,
Speaker 2: you know, animals and food safety, and so the government
Speaker 2: asked you to plant four acres of apples because you
Speaker 2: could make cider and have a form of liquid that
Speaker 2: was safer for you. But then other people say, well,
Speaker 2: Johnny apple Seed was successful because he brought liquor to
Speaker 2: the colonists. But you know, there's nuances to the story.
Speaker 1: Well, the differences between regions, whether it's kazakh Sander, the UK,
Speaker 1: or Washington State or upstate New York or in the
Speaker 1: mountains of southern California, are there any differences like terra
Speaker 1: noir like with grapes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't really call it that, but I think
Speaker 2: in the future that may happen. And there's actually been
Speaker 2: some really cool studies that even in a relatively close area,
Speaker 2: so let's say within half a mile of one another,
Speaker 2: you can have massively different effects on the volatiles that
Speaker 2: an apple gives off the sweetness sourness combinations.
Speaker 1: So just toss an apple and you'll hit research about
Speaker 1: flavors of apples, like the twenty seventeen paper Sweet Taste
Speaker 1: and Apple the roll of sorbitol, individual sugars, organic acids,
Speaker 1: and volatile compounds, which notes that after sorbitol and solible
Speaker 1: solid content like glucose, the most important contribution to apple
Speaker 1: sweetness comes from the scent of several volatile compounds, mainly
Speaker 1: esters derived from acids and farnacene, which smells like green
Speaker 1: apple and it attracts apple worms. But yes, even with
Speaker 1: a similar geography, apples can vary and smells an tastes.
Speaker 2: And so we do have that effect, but we also
Speaker 2: have regional preferences. So if you grow up, and I
Speaker 2: also have to ask you, growing up in southern California,
Speaker 2: what was your favorite apple.
Speaker 1: Well, I grew up in northern California, but I've been
Speaker 1: down here for like twenty five kaars. But I would
Speaker 1: say way back when, yes, there were as many cool varieties.
Speaker 1: They're still being grown in laboratories. But I've always been
Speaker 1: like a green apple person.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Granny Smeth was grand Yeah, Okay. How about Gravenstein.
Speaker 1: I don't know it. Okay, so is that a kind
Speaker 1: of striated one or no, it's striped.
Speaker 2: They have an annual Gravenstein conference out in California. I
Speaker 2: know that I.
Speaker 1: Totally knew this, but I couldn't think of the name,
Speaker 1: and I blanked. I was nervous. Also, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to go to the fiftieth anniversary of the Gravenstein Apple Fair,
Speaker 1: sorry losers, you missed it. It was this past August,
Speaker 1: but hey, there's always a fifty first. So when you
Speaker 1: see a Gravenstein apple, just sink, hey, wow, this is
Speaker 1: a descendant of an apple found in a monastery which
Speaker 1: captured the fancy of a guy named Count Carl Alstedt,
Speaker 1: who shipped a branch back to his brother, Count Frederick
Speaker 1: the Younger in the mid sixteen hundreds. And now you're
Speaker 1: just eating one on a bench waiting for your connecting
Speaker 1: flight out of Dallas.
Speaker 2: And so there's all sorts of nuanced you know, stories
Speaker 2: of where an apple came from, and a lot of
Speaker 2: the people that like heirloom varieties, and heirlooms can be
Speaker 2: really good, but there's a reason that they're no longer grown.
Speaker 2: So either they didn't produce enough for growers or they
Speaker 2: had a certain Achilles heel issue that made them less
Speaker 2: than profitable. But they have a romance and a history
Speaker 2: to them, So who doesn't want to try Thomas Jefferson's
Speaker 2: favorite apple.
Speaker 1: If you must know, this was likely the Theapus Spitzenberg,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a physics professor, but it's actually a
Speaker 1: crimson apple that's oblong and sweet, tart, a little spice.
Speaker 2: Or you know, the apple that your mom had in
Speaker 2: her backyard. But then sometimes people will try these apples
Speaker 2: and go chee. I thought it was a lot better
Speaker 2: than that when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: They're like, apples have come so far that you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't thank you. I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 1: teachers that are like, really a red delicious really of
Speaker 1: all the apples, right, that's like such an iconic give
Speaker 1: the teacher an apple, and it's also I think probably
Speaker 1: a lot of people's loose favorite apple, no offense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's no.
Speaker 2: It's losing popularity in Washington. The acreage is definitely going down.
Speaker 2: But what the original delicious was actually a really good apple.
Speaker 2: So there's some genetic changes that occur naturally. And I
Speaker 2: used the example of a famous woman professor at Cornell,
Speaker 2: Barbara McClintock, looked to Indian corn and she said, why
Speaker 2: are these kernels different colors, different patterns? And she hypothesized
Speaker 2: that there was something called transposable elements or jumping genes,
Speaker 2: so that these genetic elements could insert themselves into DNA,
Speaker 2: and if it was near a gene for color, it
Speaker 2: could change the expression of that gene. So that's why
Speaker 2: you see you know, light colors, dark colors, stripes, spots,
Speaker 2: And we have those transposons in apple too.
Speaker 1: So a transposon is also called a transposable element or
Speaker 1: a TE and essentially means that parts of a DNA
Speaker 1: sequence can jump around an organism's genome. And this massive
Speaker 1: discovery that changed the way we see genetics is also
Speaker 1: known as Jumpin' jenes, a term which sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like it could play the bancho, but yeah. Its discovery
Speaker 1: is credited to one Cornell University botanist, doctor Barbara McClintock,
Speaker 1: who got her PhD in the nineteen twenties, even though
Speaker 1: her mom didn't want her to attend college because it
Speaker 1: would make her unmarriageable. Also, from what I gather, she
Speaker 1: didn't get along very well with her mom, And my
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that her mom was a bitch. But anyway,
Speaker 1: she was studying what was then known as Indian corn,
Speaker 1: but today it's more commonly called flint corn, and it's
Speaker 1: a crop that was first domesticated by indigenous peoples of
Speaker 1: what's now Mexico some nine thousand years ago. So, after
Speaker 1: much May's research, barb publishes this groundbreaking paper about genes
Speaker 1: switching positions and leading to new mutations. And she strode
Speaker 1: up to a podium of a symposium and I teen
Speaker 1: fifty one, back when women couldn't open their own bank accounts,
Speaker 1: and she was like, y'all get ready for some crazy cornshit,
Speaker 1: and according to historical account, the room went quiet, dead silence.
Speaker 1: Doctor mcclintick said the reaction from her peers was puzzlement
Speaker 1: and even hostility, and that she was startled to find
Speaker 1: out they didn't understand it. I didn't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: And then finally, nearly two decades later, someone else discovered
Speaker 1: tees or transposons in bacteria and they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: remember that lady that we talked shit on. She was
Speaker 1: totally right. How about that? Hmm? What a world. So
Speaker 1: what did Barbara McClinton get from this, Well, the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. They were like,
Speaker 1: we fucked up. She also got this aside. Also, if
Speaker 1: you go to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC, you can gaze upon her very microscope
Speaker 1: and some ears of her corn. Because it turns out
Speaker 1: that transposable elements comprise about half of the human genome
Speaker 1: in up to ninety percent of corn jeens like in
Speaker 1: flint corn, Susan explains.
Speaker 2: And they're also for color because that seems to be
Speaker 2: a gene that mutates easily, and it could be from
Speaker 2: cold weather, it could be from hard pruning, but there's
Speaker 2: genetic changes in the very small shoot tip and when
Speaker 2: you get more color, you can lose the ability to
Speaker 2: produce a lot of volatiles. So the original Delicious was
Speaker 2: very poorly colored and striped, and then each time it
Speaker 2: mutated for color, it lost. In our opinion of some researchers,
Speaker 2: it lost some of the quality that the original one had.
Speaker 1: Oh so it's sort of more fashion and less funks.
Speaker 2: It tastes exactly perfect Eliot.
Speaker 1: As someone who's a Granny Smith type of person, and
Speaker 1: I tend to go toward the more tart ones. Why
Speaker 1: are green apples so tart and just thinking about them
Speaker 1: makes you start drooling? And red apples tend to be
Speaker 1: less tart.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's that's not quite accurate. But okay, I
Speaker 2: underst know, I understand where you're coming from. So Granny
Speaker 2: Smith does have a very tart perception. And there actually
Speaker 2: was a Granny Smith that threw out her apple pie
Speaker 2: trimmings and that apple came up in her compost pile,
Speaker 2: and that's how it became in Australia. It became an
Speaker 2: interesting apple for the world. No, yeah, yeah, So what's
Speaker 2: cool about green apples is we've tried to develop a
Speaker 2: really good green apple for the Northeast because Granny Smith
Speaker 2: takes too long of a growing season to grow here.
Speaker 2: But when you cross green apples, you don't get beautiful
Speaker 2: green apples. You get kind of putrid pea green, you
Speaker 2: get yellow, you get all sorts of different things. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you don't get that acidity. So a lot of red
Speaker 2: apples can be acid. But the reason that most apples
Speaker 2: in the marketplace are sweeter is that seventy percent of
Speaker 2: the population at least in North America. But I think
Speaker 2: worldwide prefer a sweet apple, and only thirty percent like
Speaker 2: one with more acidity.
Speaker 1: Really, I have a minority with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in the minority too.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is a cute story and it's sad
Speaker 1: that it's not true. So I went down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole to find out the actual origin story of the
Speaker 1: Granny Smith and it turns out that a woman in
Speaker 1: Australia was baking a lot of apples and throwing the
Speaker 1: cores out her windows. So yes, the story is totally true,
Speaker 1: which healed my heart. It restored my faith in charming
Speaker 1: agricultural narratives. I was so happy to fact check that.
Speaker 1: And also I saw a photo of Granny Smith and
Speaker 1: it was just as you'd picture her. Just big, billowing
Speaker 1: black dress and a bonnet shading her wise face, which
Speaker 1: is a grid of laughter lines and puckered from crab
Speaker 1: apple eating. Also, I do love that apple, and it
Speaker 1: turns out Granny Smith apples are pretty popular. The conceptual
Speaker 1: artist yogo Oho debuted apiece in a London gallery in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. It was this tall, clear plexi glass
Speaker 1: stand holding a fresh Granny Smith apple and below it
Speaker 1: a tiny plaque bearing the word apple. The title of
Speaker 1: the piece was Apple and a Vanity Fair. Art critic
Speaker 1: wrote of this historical artwork in glowing terms, praising its
Speaker 1: reflection on the passage of time marked by the apple's
Speaker 1: decay and periodic renewal as it is replaced throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the exhibition. For its nineteen sixty six debut,
Speaker 1: it was priced it four hundred dollars, which is roughly
Speaker 1: four grand today. And apparently one of the people who
Speaker 1: came to the art show picked the apple up off
Speaker 1: the stand and bit into it and then just calmly
Speaker 1: placed it back, and yogo Ono recalled, I was so furious,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to say, and it all showed
Speaker 1: in my face. How dare this person? You know, mess
Speaker 1: around with my work. She said, that person's John Lennon,
Speaker 1: you know the rest. Anyway, Grannie Smith was growing some
Speaker 1: French crab apples, and now we have Granny Smiths. But
Speaker 1: what about crab apples? Do they have like a ton
Speaker 1: of acidity? Why does my face suddenly suction inward like
Speaker 1: someone who got a deal on cheek fat removal? What
Speaker 1: about crab apples? Do they have a ton of acidity?
Speaker 2: They don't even have just acidity, So they have a stringency.
Speaker 2: So the tannins that make red wine good, that make tea,
Speaker 2: you know, have that little zing to it. Those tannins
Speaker 2: are present in apples, but specifically in crab apples. And
Speaker 2: the term tannin was because they actually use those compounds
Speaker 2: to tan leather. We breed crab apples for ornamental use
Speaker 2: for landscape trees. But what I love to do with
Speaker 2: classes because everybody thinks, you know, like well you you know,
Speaker 2: and I'll get back to your question about how do
Speaker 2: you breed something good? But students always think if it
Speaker 2: looks good, it's going to be good. Because Americans buy
Speaker 2: with our eye. If it's really red, we think it's
Speaker 2: going to be great. And so I'll pick apples that
Speaker 2: I know aren't good and put them in a basket
Speaker 2: and have the students pick. But one day I decided
Speaker 2: I was going to give them a red fleshed apple
Speaker 2: with a lot of acidity and a lot of astringency.
Speaker 2: And I asked for permission to videotape them. And the
Speaker 2: reaction was priceless. They were like, that's not fair, and
Speaker 2: I was like, that's what we bite into sometimes. But
Speaker 2: I did that with my children when they were little.
Speaker 2: I would throw crab apples on their lunch and then
Speaker 2: they'd come back and they'd like. The kids loved them
Speaker 2: because they're like shock tarts or war you know, airheads warheads, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because the flavor and those are sour apple flavor.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask about that with apple candies
Speaker 1: and sodas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, malc acid yep, is that.
Speaker 1: What's giving the flavor or that tartner?
Speaker 2: Uh huh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't know if you remember this, but
Speaker 1: for a while there was a soda called Slice and
Speaker 1: they had an apple flavor, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to it, but I've always wondered, why isn't there
Speaker 1: more apple gum or apple sodas or things that you know,
Speaker 1: Grape and bubble gum is everywhere, oranges everywhere.
Speaker 2: An apple, well, well, apple juice should have apple sauce. Apple,
Speaker 2: you know, the fruit leather is basically a lot of apple.
Speaker 1: I don't know neither die. So I spent way too
Speaker 1: long researching the history of the carbonated soda Slice, which
Speaker 1: debuted in the mid eighties and contained ten percent fruit
Speaker 1: juice and later quietly no fruit juice but had weird flavors,
Speaker 1: including apple slice, which was only on the planet for
Speaker 1: two years. But I suppose it made an impression on me,
Speaker 1: partly because I had it on a road trip with
Speaker 1: my uncle Ron to go sledding, and I got carsick
Speaker 1: on the mountain roads and I will never forget the
Speaker 1: sight of the empty apple slice can rolling around the
Speaker 1: floor of the car. But Slice was supposed to make
Speaker 1: a comeback this year, and people I'm waiting. Meanwhile, Mexico
Speaker 1: is like, hello, we have sidral Mundet and Manzanita Sole,
Speaker 1: two apple sodas for you, And I guess there's also
Speaker 1: Martinelli Cider, which is sparkling apple juice. But we have
Speaker 1: a whole episode on Applesider called ciderology, including the hard stuff.
Speaker 1: And yes, of course it's linked in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But yes, more apple flavored things, please. The public is
Speaker 1: demanding it as of right now.
Speaker 2: It's a mystery, especially like Concord when I get in
Speaker 2: trouble with the New York audience. But conquered grape juice
Speaker 2: is great. But as a parent, having Toddler's spell conquered
Speaker 2: grape juice on your rug is not a highlight of
Speaker 2: your day.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to ask, what's what that one
Speaker 1: apple that tastes like grapes? Where did that one come from?
Speaker 2: Are you referring to the grapple?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, so that's interesting because it's actually an apple
Speaker 2: that's soaked in honk or juice type flavoring.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're not allergic to apples, there's some
Speaker 2: allergens and apples that people are very seriously allergic to.
Speaker 2: And you can be not allergic to apples and not
Speaker 2: allergic to grape. But there's proven documentation of people allergic
Speaker 2: to grapple apples.
Speaker 1: So allergic folks, what if you're sitting there just asking
Speaker 1: universe why why.
Speaker 2: They serve a purpose to the plant by trying to
Speaker 2: fight off and service defense. But people that are highly
Speaker 2: sensitive will develop an oral allergy. And interestingly, if you're
Speaker 2: allergic to white birch pollen, you're more prone to have
Speaker 2: an apple allergy because the two allergens are very similar
Speaker 2: in structure. And so that blew my mind because it
Speaker 2: was like, but babies don't get sensitized to birch, you know, pollen,
Speaker 2: But I guess they do. And I think the Netherlands
Speaker 2: they funded research on anti allergens no allergenicity and apple
Speaker 2: because people were having anaphylactic reactions to them.
Speaker 1: Could that be regional at all?
Speaker 2: Yes, it could be.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, speaking of kind of cross writings. What about
Speaker 1: papples pear apples? What's to do? Are they apples or pears?
Speaker 2: Oh? So, now I'm curious where you heard the term apple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that they're called Asian pears.
Speaker 2: But oh okay, I'm glad I asked. So Asian pears
Speaker 2: are pears, they're just there's two types of pears, European
Speaker 2: and Asian. And the papples aren't aren't pear apples, they're
Speaker 2: just pure pair.
Speaker 1: Oh but because they're around, we've been sold Yeah, good right?
Speaker 2: And because all of us we always like to push
Speaker 2: the envelope a little bit. So breeders have crossed pair
Speaker 2: and apple, and while there isn't a product ready for market,
Speaker 2: we're learning a lot lot about genes. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of genes and par and apple that are very similar,
Speaker 2: but there's some that are very different. But we're learning
Speaker 2: more about how we could further innercross those. But where
Speaker 2: we have had success inter generically is the apricots and
Speaker 2: the pluots, which are plum aprica or apricot plum hybrids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those things are good too. Yeah, I'm down with it,
Speaker 1: all of this inter botanical fiddling. Johnny Appleseed's ghost right
Speaker 1: now is lived at us. Speaking of the dear Lea departed,
Speaker 1: what about extinct apples? Are there any that are just
Speaker 1: legendary that hopefully someone discovers a seed packet in a
Speaker 1: dusty museum or something.
Speaker 2: Okay, so again because yeah, yeah, because and that's the problem.
Speaker 2: But there are a lot of really passionate fruit detectives
Speaker 2: that go around trying to find lost trees. And I
Speaker 2: spoke with someone last week about this very topic, and
Speaker 2: I explain that heirlooms play an important role But what
Speaker 2: people don't realize is that the USDA has a massive collection,
Speaker 2: in fact in Geneva, New York, right down the street
Speaker 2: from us where they collected over three thousand different apple varieties,
Speaker 2: and that serves as a living library. And the importance
Speaker 2: is not necessarily every apple that ever existed being saved,
Speaker 2: but specific genes of interest and so like, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, if you're one of six children, ideally
Speaker 2: would to want to preserve each and every member of
Speaker 2: the family. But as long as there's one descendant, the
Speaker 2: majority of your genes are preserved.
Speaker 1: Child free folks, please bookmark that fact for any holiday
Speaker 1: encounters in which relatives discuss your reproductive intentions. I hope
Speaker 1: that you have horny baby making siblings.
Speaker 2: So that's what happens with apples that you you know,
Speaker 2: you have different manifestations and different types of it. But
Speaker 2: when you look at a lot of these older varieties
Speaker 2: that are found, they're derived from a relatively small number
Speaker 2: of ancestors.
Speaker 1: Oh, so there is a certain loss, but you take
Speaker 1: what you can get, correct.
Speaker 2: And apples are remarkably diverse. So that's why I love
Speaker 2: working on them, because I couldn't work with a crop
Speaker 2: that was having to be bred for uniformity. So rice
Speaker 2: you wanted to be uniform, corn you wanted to be uniform,
Speaker 2: wheat boring, but apples you could. You know, walking down
Speaker 2: any particular row, you're going to see so many different
Speaker 2: manifestations of quality of tree shaped, tree size. We have
Speaker 2: apple trees that grow horizontally. We have apple trees that
Speaker 2: grow more like Brussels sprouts. So there's just all sorts
Speaker 2: of wild variation and it's great for research studies, but
Speaker 2: also if we can answer some of those questions, it'll
Speaker 2: help us be better, even better in the future.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, apples that grow like Brussels sprouts. How in
Speaker 1: the gravity does that happen? Well, I just watched too
Speaker 1: many videos on orchard planning, and as it turns out,
Speaker 1: they can grow apple trees that are tall and supported
Speaker 1: by wires and they look like columns of leaves and
Speaker 1: fruit and it's called tall spindle growing.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 1: I always picture apple trees as these big, round, bushy
Speaker 1: things in orchards, Like if they could talk, they would
Speaker 1: be like, how do you feel about getting apples at
Speaker 1: the farm or the orchard versus the grocery store? Do
Speaker 1: you have a preference in terms of where you get
Speaker 1: your apples. Have some been in cold storage for a while,
Speaker 1: does that affect the taste?
Speaker 2: Okay? So proudly cold storage was developed at Cornell Hey,
Speaker 2: and the idea was that cold storage mimics you can
Speaker 2: a lot of times, you know, we had root sellers
Speaker 2: or basements or really prehistoric they used to try to
Speaker 2: preserve foods and caves, and so cold storage is essentially
Speaker 2: kind of like trying to simulate the atmosphere of a cave.
Speaker 2: So the idea is you lower the temperature enough that
Speaker 2: the apples are kept cold but don't freeze. But surprisingly
Speaker 2: you can be at thirty two and still not freeze
Speaker 2: the apple.
Speaker 1: So in celsius that would be zero. Is that not freezing?
Speaker 1: So light frosts usually won't do much harm, but for
Speaker 1: prolonged periods, not great for an apple or the tree,
Speaker 1: unless pomologists like Susan are on it.
Speaker 2: But then you control the amount of oxygen and CO
Speaker 2: two the apples are giving off, and regular storage just
Speaker 2: controls the temperature. Controlled atmosphere, controls the level of these gases,
Speaker 2: and it creates a chance for apples to be in
Speaker 2: kind of suspended animation, and so you can have an
Speaker 2: apple that's been in storage for three years, phenomenal. But
Speaker 2: if it's a new variety, or if picking wasn't done
Speaker 2: at the proper time, you can have a really good
Speaker 2: apple that doesn't perform as well as it should. So
Speaker 2: that's a whole science. That's a post harvest physiologist.
Speaker 1: A post harvest physiologist. Yeah, that's another ology the second episode.
Speaker 2: And so I collaborate. So one. I'm very proud of
Speaker 2: our accomplishments at Cornell. My research technician Kevin Malonia is
Speaker 2: an important part of the team. But we interact with
Speaker 2: plant pathologists, we interact with entomologists, which I know you've covered,
Speaker 2: food scientists, plant physiologists, post harvest physiologists. It really takes
Speaker 2: a village to produce an apple, and we couldn't get
Speaker 2: where we were without that kind of collaboration.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure, because you might have fungal blights you
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, introduced pests. Not to mention climate scientists, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Is there one thing in particular that is most threatening
Speaker 1: to apple crops and varieties right now?
Speaker 2: Climate change? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And labor Oh right, are they all hand harvested?
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's interesting. We did the documentary and the
Speaker 2: producer went, there's still harvested by hand, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: because the technology is getting better. And some of the
Speaker 2: technology kind of blows your mind that there's machines that
Speaker 2: almost look like frisbees that come up and pick apples.
Speaker 1: Okay, so apple picking machines are weird. Okay. Some look
Speaker 1: like rows and rows of ceiling fans stacked on top
Speaker 1: of each other, just rotating past trees like a car wash.
Speaker 1: And I saw another article describing fourteen foot tall robots
Speaker 1: with camera eyes and a half dozen arms, each topped
Speaker 1: with a suction cup. But why are these workarounds? Well,
Speaker 1: in Washington State alone, each year they pick twelve billion
Speaker 1: apples by hand. How much does that cost? No idea.
Speaker 1: According to the seasonal jobs page on the Department of
Speaker 1: Labour's website, you can make about eighteen bucks an hour,
Speaker 1: or between thirty to forty thousand dollars a year working
Speaker 1: full time, although the jobs are as the website states
Speaker 1: seasonal jobs, and according to one help wanted description, I read,
Speaker 1: you need prior picking experience and the abilities to work
Speaker 1: on ladders up to twelve feet tall, climb up and
Speaker 1: down ladder while carrying full bag, have no problems with balance,
Speaker 1: be able to work in conditions including rain and temperatures
Speaker 1: from thirty five degrees to more than one hundred degrees.
Speaker 1: Be Able to bend, stoop, stand, and lift up to
Speaker 1: sixty pounds of apples for the entire workday. And one
Speaker 1: farmer looking into more robot technology told a newspaper roofully,
Speaker 1: the younger generation doesn't aspire to be an apple picker
Speaker 1: right now. We're trying to figure out how we can
Speaker 1: keep enough employees to get our crops picked until this
Speaker 1: technology evolves. I'm not a roboticist, but I guess one
Speaker 1: solution might be just to pay them more.
Speaker 2: But a human is amazingly effective and a lot of
Speaker 2: the hand labor is much faster, and when you're picking,
Speaker 2: a robot has to know. And this is something I
Speaker 2: try to tell people, so when they go to pick apples,
Speaker 2: they do it right. Everybody wants to pull the apple
Speaker 2: down from the tree, and so they yank at the
Speaker 2: whole tree shakes. But what you want to do is
Speaker 2: you want to lift the apple up and then twist
Speaker 2: and then that stem will come off easily. You don't
Speaker 2: damage the tree. But when pickers are picking, they're picking
Speaker 2: with both hands. But then nowadays when you buy apples,
Speaker 2: you probably never notice, but the stems are clipped because
Speaker 2: if a stem is too long and it hits into
Speaker 2: another apple and the picking bag or the bin, it
Speaker 2: causes a puncture and that can rot. So the pickers
Speaker 2: actually carry little snippers, and so they have to pick
Speaker 2: the apple, cut off the stem, and then put it
Speaker 2: in the bag.
Speaker 1: And yes, you do want a little bit of a
Speaker 1: stem because it's like a quirk that prevents tiny little
Speaker 1: microcritters from nesting in your apple, because no matter how
Speaker 1: nice you are, those microcritters are not welcome. And if
Speaker 1: one rots, that adage of one bad apple, does that
Speaker 1: emit certain gases?
Speaker 2: Yes, yep, it emits ethylene, which further enhances ripening but
Speaker 2: enhances spoilage. So the one bad apple is definitely true.
Speaker 2: You know, if you have a basket of apples and
Speaker 2: they're rotting, usually you'll find a decayed one on the bottom.
Speaker 2: But you can also use apples to make things ripen better.
Speaker 2: That's why you don't want to keep apples and bananas together, googles,
Speaker 2: they're going to make each other ripen. But you can
Speaker 2: put an apple next to a vermeiliad flower and the
Speaker 2: gas from the apple will help the vermeiliad flower.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, I got to figure out what a vermiliad.
Speaker 2: It kind of looks like a pine apple.
Speaker 1: Oh, I got to look at yeah, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: look these up and imagine like a long leaved house plant,
Speaker 1: like a snakeplant, but then there's like a hot, pink,
Speaker 1: squishy pine cone in the middle, kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a plant with a wacky hat. Do you love it?
Speaker 1: Let's move on to something with less botanical glamor though.
Speaker 1: I saw that you have a paper on rusting, and
Speaker 1: is that what we call apple rust? Is that the oxidation?
Speaker 2: No, so apple rust isn't the oxidation either. So apple
Speaker 2: rust is a disease that causes little orange circles on
Speaker 2: the leaf, and it's called cedar apple rust because the
Speaker 2: cedars are an alternate host. The disease doesn't occur unless
Speaker 2: you have cedars and apples in pretty close proximity. Apple
Speaker 2: browning is a form of oxidation, but it's when the
Speaker 2: flesh is cut and certain compounds interact and cause the
Speaker 2: oxidation reaction or browning. Now, people always complain about apple browning,
Speaker 2: and I loved the comments because they were like, just
Speaker 2: cut it off. You know, you put your apple down
Speaker 2: chalk on the phone, it's brown. All you have to
Speaker 2: do is use a little knife and cut the surface
Speaker 2: and underneath it is perfectly you know, fine, Okay.
Speaker 1: I found some first hand advice from a Serious Eats
Speaker 1: article which offered the tips of soaking cut apple slices
Speaker 1: in a saline solution of half a teaspoon of salt
Speaker 1: per cup of water, and then you rinse off the
Speaker 1: salty taste before you serve them. Or you could submerge
Speaker 1: them in plain water, which prevents the apple slices from
Speaker 1: having so much exposure to oxygen. Or you could introduce
Speaker 1: some citrus which has a zorbic acid and it keeps
Speaker 1: a pH lower which can reduce oxidation. Or like Susan says,
Speaker 1: even stopping a baby and just deal with it or
Speaker 1: cut it off. Also, this whole thing has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with apple russe. It turns out that's a texture thing,
Speaker 1: and I love it.
Speaker 2: Apple rusting. You know that potatoes are rusted it they
Speaker 2: weren't always and that's why, like Ukon golds don't have
Speaker 2: the russet. Oh okay, yeah, so the rusted potatoes that
Speaker 2: is just like cork cells. When you buy pears, certain
Speaker 2: pairs have rusted, and those again are just cork cells.
Speaker 2: They have no detrimental effect. Well, in the olden days
Speaker 2: they liked rust it because they can desiccate, but they
Speaker 2: can also hold their shape better. So we in fact,
Speaker 2: I have in my office right now a full russet
Speaker 2: that has a modern taste, and I hope that it'll
Speaker 2: be one of the next apples we name because the
Speaker 2: quality is exceptional.
Speaker 1: So think of an Asian pear or a Deandrew pear,
Speaker 1: kind of like a matte rough fibery finish.
Speaker 2: But that genetic difference is complex. And I made crosses
Speaker 2: hoping to get russeting, and I got none. And then
Speaker 2: I made process not to get russet, and I got
Speaker 2: fully rusted offspring. I went to get PhD and quantitative
Speaker 2: genetics so I would know everything. You know, guess what.
Speaker 2: And that's what makes it fun because you can say,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought that this was going to work.
Speaker 2: So you were asking, like, how do you get quality?
Speaker 2: And so when you think about and this is simplifying it.
Speaker 2: So apples have upwards to fifty four thousand genes.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how many do you have? Like less
Speaker 1: than half an apples according to most recent calculations.
Speaker 2: So when you look at genetics, if you ever took genetics,
Speaker 2: you know they're always looking at Mendel and you know
Speaker 2: a three to one or a one to one ratio,
Speaker 2: or if it's more complicated, you know a nine to
Speaker 2: three to three to one ratio. But in essence, it's
Speaker 2: not just the genes. There's transcription factors, things that turn
Speaker 2: on the machinery. There's promoters which amplify what's going on there,
Speaker 2: interactions between all sorts of genes, and so stuff we
Speaker 2: thought was really simple. You can do studies now and
Speaker 2: there can be sixty thousand different gene differences between two
Speaker 2: different groups, and so it's challenging, but it's exciting because
Speaker 2: once we crack the mystery on one complex, we may
Speaker 2: make greater efforts. But the russet was one of my
Speaker 2: graduate students, Ben Guterres, being really brilliant in that he
Speaker 2: used one of those transposable elements or genetic sports to
Speaker 2: look at an apple that naturally can be half the
Speaker 2: fruit can be russet and half the fruit isn't oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, And so he was able to look at
Speaker 2: the differences on the same fruit, but that we're expressing
Speaker 2: the genes or not expressing, and that made a really
Speaker 2: clear cut study of what was going on.
Speaker 1: Imagine if Batman's supervillain, Harvey Dent slash two face was
Speaker 1: an apple form and was created by scientists tinkering with nature.
Speaker 1: And back to that, what are transcription factors and promoters.
Speaker 1: So a transcription factor is a protein that controls when
Speaker 1: DNA tells messenger RNA to do something based on maybe
Speaker 1: if it's good timing, and promoters also control gene expression.
Speaker 1: Has it changed a lot in recent years as it's
Speaker 1: easier to sequence genomes or look at really some of
Speaker 1: those genetic mechanics.
Speaker 2: In some ways, I was thrilled when I came on
Speaker 2: the job. We didn't have many molecular markers. We did
Speaker 2: the first genetic apple map here. But the problem is
Speaker 2: markers are only as good as how broad they are.
Speaker 2: So if molecular markers developed in a particular population but
Speaker 2: it doesn't work on another population, you have to know
Speaker 2: that because you could throw out material that's perfectly good.
Speaker 2: A lot of times when you look papers, you'll see
Speaker 2: so a QTL is a quantitative trade low side that
Speaker 2: just means a lot of different genes are responsible and
Speaker 2: their interactions controlling that trait. So I think a height
Speaker 2: in humans, you know that there's not an easy trait.
Speaker 1: So again, a quantitative trait locus is a spot on
Speaker 1: a gene where you might have a single nucleotide polymorphism
Speaker 1: and a versus a T or a C versus a
Speaker 1: G so you or in this case an apple can
Speaker 1: have a different appearance or flavor or size, which is
Speaker 1: a phenotype or how the genes are expressed based on
Speaker 1: really complex variations in single fragments of DNA that could
Speaker 1: be in different combos in different spots, or even on
Speaker 1: a few different chromosomes. And you'd think that if you
Speaker 1: have the brain and the technology to figure out which
Speaker 1: genes do exactly what, you would have the entire puzzle
Speaker 1: laid out for you.
Speaker 2: But when we do QTL studies, that particular portion or
Speaker 2: marker associated with that trait may only explain like eleven
Speaker 2: percent of the variation.
Speaker 1: Ah, so you're just chasing, trying to chase information, right,
Speaker 1: not always be a good lead.
Speaker 2: Right, So we use the markers to help us fine
Speaker 2: tune things. So, for example, you can't cross an apple
Speaker 2: with itself. So some varieties you can self. You know,
Speaker 2: humans we can't self, but apples you have to cross
Speaker 2: with a genetically distinct apple variety, and there's a mechanism
Speaker 2: that keeps genetically similar individuals from setting seed. But if
Speaker 2: you make a cross and the cross doesn't work, is
Speaker 2: it because it has too close genes for interaction, or
Speaker 2: that the weather was crappy, the you know, the pollen
Speaker 2: wasn't good. And so it allows us to say, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to look at the molecular marker for s
Speaker 2: incompatibility alleles and I can tell if this is going
Speaker 2: to be compatible or not.
Speaker 1: So if it's just not happening, Susan can look under
Speaker 1: the hood genetically speaking, and try to figure out which
Speaker 1: genes have thrown a wrench in things.
Speaker 2: And then if it doesn't set fruit, we can look
Speaker 2: at other issues. Or if I only want to produce
Speaker 2: red apples, I can screen. But the problem is a
Speaker 2: lot of the traits that consumers, growers and I are
Speaker 2: most interested in are those that are complex so yield flavor.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to tie down because some of the
Speaker 2: flavor perceptions are the human perception and you can't necessarily
Speaker 2: get at that. And so for firmness, we're still chasing firmness.
Speaker 2: And that's because we know that a crisp apple gives
Speaker 2: off a sound, and they started doing measurements of sounds
Speaker 2: when people bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that specific.
Speaker 2: We all have different sized mouths, we have different tooth structures,
Speaker 2: we eat apples differently ps.
Speaker 1: The Guinness Book World Record for apple crunching was set
Speaker 1: in Germany in twenty seventeen when a bite of an
Speaker 1: apple clocked in at eighty four point six decibels, which
Speaker 1: is louder than a garbage disposal. All credit should go
Speaker 1: to the apple grower and not just the guy who
Speaker 1: bought an apple and bit it. But why does it
Speaker 1: matter though, Well, according to the twenty fourteen study in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Food Quality and Preference called effects of
Speaker 1: the sound of the bite on apple perceived crispness and
Speaker 1: hardness in taste testing, when a sneaky ambient sound filter
Speaker 1: is applied and the crunch factor is muted, quote, crispness
Speaker 1: was perceived as significantly lower with any of the sound reductions,
Speaker 1: so if you don't hear the apple crunch, you think
Speaker 1: you've got to Saggi apple. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: hell that apple growers go through to make us happy.
Speaker 2: They're going back to it. They're actually starting to interpret
Speaker 2: that more and we're doing a lot more interactions with people.
Speaker 2: But like, some people perceive a stringency more than others.
Speaker 2: So I'm one of those, and I'll say to my
Speaker 2: research support specialist, Kevin Boy, this is really a stringent,
Speaker 2: and he's like, not a stringent? Did you have coffee?
Speaker 2: And it was like, so he and I perceive it differently.
Speaker 2: And then there's just certain compounds or notes that so
Speaker 2: this Russa apple has a note of black liquish or fennel.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting is you either hate it or love it.
Speaker 2: There's no middle ground. And so I had people from
Speaker 2: Turkey saying, if you made this apple in our country,
Speaker 2: you would be queen, and I said, well, I like
Speaker 2: the sound of that. And then somebody else spit into
Speaker 2: the apple in my office. And not only did she
Speaker 2: spit it out into the trash camp, but she was
Speaker 2: trying to clean her tongue in front of me.
Speaker 1: Oh god, she did not enjoy it. Just a side note,
Speaker 1: black licorice flavor comes from clair risin from the root
Speaker 1: of a bean plant, and it's fifty times sweeter than sugar.
Speaker 1: And since most people pass on their share, you might
Speaker 1: be left hold in the bag gleefully. So some of
Speaker 1: that preference is genetic and some is based on your
Speaker 1: memories in association with the smell of fennel or licorice.
Speaker 1: Watch out, pump the brakes, slow your roll. Gorging on
Speaker 1: black licorice can drive your potassium levels down and might
Speaker 1: result in pseudo hyperaldosterinism, irregular heartbeats, or even cardiovascular failure.
Speaker 1: And the FDA and the American Heart Association tell you
Speaker 1: to take it easy, dude, And after the age of forty,
Speaker 1: you gotta limit yourself to less than two ounces of
Speaker 1: black licorice a day. And I have never been less
Speaker 1: afraid of anything in my life personally. Just like, no thanks.
Speaker 1: We just did an episode about gustetology about taste buds
Speaker 1: and people tasting different levels of bitterness and being super tasters.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you have to have like
Speaker 1: on a tasting panel, several people, Oh.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, And you also, you know, like if you
Speaker 2: have when you said one bad apple. We'll have growers
Speaker 2: involved in tasting to determine the right harvest date. And
Speaker 2: if there's one apple, you may get seven negative votes
Speaker 2: because each of them took a slice from the bad apple,
Speaker 2: And then everybody else is rating it differently, and you
Speaker 2: know something's wrong and there's an outlier, and then there's
Speaker 2: some people that are just not good testers. So there's
Speaker 2: all sorts of studies about how to make a taste panel.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I read one study that noted the apples are served
Speaker 1: to the evaluators under tinted lighting to mask how green
Speaker 1: or red they are, so they avoid visual biases. And
Speaker 1: then another paper said that they recruit experienced subjects in
Speaker 1: sensory science and fruit growers familiar with apple tasting. Notes.
Speaker 1: That's so funny to brag like, I'm one of the
Speaker 1: better apple tasters. A lucrative business, Hey, date apple, Can
Speaker 1: I ask you some questions from listeners they know that
Speaker 1: you're coming on. Oh sure, okay, amazing. We'll breeze through
Speaker 1: some of them, just like lightning round.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we'll be doing a lightning round of your questions.
Speaker 1: But first we donate to a charity of our guests selection.
Speaker 1: Usually I tell you all about it here and I
Speaker 1: include a link. But we haven't gotten Susan's choice yet,
Speaker 1: so just trust that when we do, we'll toss a
Speaker 1: bushel of money at them, and we'll link it on
Speaker 1: our website and in the show notes once we know
Speaker 1: it and the donation is made possible by sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you sponsors. Okay, let's pick through your
Speaker 1: questions and two through the answers. Grace Robis Show, Emily,
Speaker 1: Samantha McGarrell, Janie Radigan and Paulina Kristinka want to know
Speaker 1: if you have any tips in Janis's words for a
Speaker 1: backyard orchard. Emily wants to know, should I grow apples
Speaker 1: in my backyard? Is that even possible?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, absolutely. But I always say this because a
Speaker 2: lot of young couples have thought of a wedding gift
Speaker 2: as an orchard, and I said, do you want to
Speaker 2: stay married? So apples? You know, our apple growers are pros.
Speaker 2: You had asked earlier about buying from apple growers or
Speaker 2: the grocery store. The grocery stores are great, they're convenient,
Speaker 2: but I like to support our local industry they're the champions.
Speaker 2: They're multi generation farms. But also they do such a
Speaker 2: good job producing apples. So when people ask me, can
Speaker 2: I grow trees? Yes, but you have to consider there's
Speaker 2: some bulletins that Cornell provides and other associations do, but
Speaker 2: you have to have a certain amount of light. You
Speaker 2: can't have deer trouncing through your yard because apples are
Speaker 2: number one on their just snacklist. If you have woods nearby,
Speaker 2: you get certain pressures, you know, and then do you
Speaker 2: own a ladder, a shovel, a spray, You're going to
Speaker 2: have to spray. And if you think you're not going
Speaker 2: to spray, then you're going to have to use a
Speaker 2: knife to cut out all the wormholes. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's challenging. You could do it. There's people that are
Speaker 2: passionate and they do a great job. But for the
Speaker 2: average person, why do you want to add that stress
Speaker 2: to your life?
Speaker 1: Right? What kind of stuff do you have to spray
Speaker 1: on them? And is that why we rub an apple
Speaker 1: on our thigh before we eat it.
Speaker 2: The only reason I'm laughing about that is we all
Speaker 2: do that. I always say that, you know, my thigh
Speaker 2: is the healthiest, But some of the reason we do
Speaker 2: that is when you see a film on an apple,
Speaker 2: sometimes that's just it's called bloom and it's a waxy substance.
Speaker 2: And so when you rub an apple against your thigh,
Speaker 2: you'll notice it's nice and shiny. It does get off
Speaker 2: surfaced and pesticides. But I want to make this point
Speaker 2: because people buy organic apples thinking that they're not sprayed. Oh,
Speaker 2: but they are very much sprayed. They're just sprayed with
Speaker 2: different compounds. Some of them are less caustic and some
Speaker 2: of them are more caustic than what is used. Our
Speaker 2: growers don't spray anymore than they have to because they're
Speaker 2: business men and women and they live on the farm,
Speaker 2: so they're not spraying anything extra because their kids are
Speaker 2: playing outdoors. And so, yes, you can grow in the backyard,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be a steep learning curve at first.
Speaker 2: But if you enjoy getting apples, then you know in
Speaker 2: the long run, you're paying less buying them from the
Speaker 2: grocery store or growers than you would trying to produce
Speaker 2: them yourself. The other thing, because of storage, do you
Speaker 2: want to have baskets and baskets of apples in your
Speaker 2: cellar or garage. And there was a story recently in
Speaker 2: the newspaper and the guy goes, I'm a pariah. They're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, he's going to give me apples again.
Speaker 1: That is so good to know that. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know what, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to grow this. Just go to an
Speaker 1: orchard and put on a scarf, put on your boots,
Speaker 1: go have some cider. Just once a year, spend a
Speaker 1: couple days at an apple orchard instead of every Right,
Speaker 1: that's so good to know. Again. We have a Ciderology episode,
Speaker 1: get into it on the topic of apple orchard chores.
Speaker 1: Patrons Holly Giorgio Effortlessly Weird, Ellen Storm, Sophie Philpot, Derek Pelloquin, Destiny,
Speaker 1: Matt Sicato, Kieren and Anna Easton shared similar questions as
Speaker 1: Leah Anderson, who asked, how can I keep the apples
Speaker 1: on my trees from getting eaten by worms and wasps
Speaker 1: without spraying? You mentioned too, spraying like our worms the
Speaker 1: common pasts and do those worms turn into moths? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, good. So there's many different things we have to
Speaker 2: spray for. But sometimes people will see a grower spraying
Speaker 2: and go, oh my god. You know that's a pesticide,
Speaker 2: but it could be calcium. We spray trees with nutrients
Speaker 2: boron copper urea, which is a form of nitrogen to
Speaker 2: help the trees grow. We put some dormant oils on
Speaker 2: during the dormant season. If you've ever had scale insects,
Speaker 2: that can be problematic, and so that's used. We do
Speaker 2: spray because we're located in a wet region and spring
Speaker 2: tends to be wet. There's certain sprays for fungal diseases
Speaker 2: like apple scab. You can have apple scab in your
Speaker 2: tree and you can live with it, but if it
Speaker 2: gets bad, the trees will defoliate, which is why so
Speaker 2: many crab apples don't have leaves around here. Oh but
Speaker 2: you also have to spray for insects now with the
Speaker 2: apple maggot, which is responsible for a lot of the
Speaker 2: worms that you see in an apple. There are sticky
Speaker 2: spheres that you can hang in your tree that have
Speaker 2: a lure and it will attract those insects and you
Speaker 2: may get away with less sprays, or you can use
Speaker 2: in the case of scap resistant variety, but you're gonna
Speaker 2: have damage and then some of that damage. If the
Speaker 2: fruits fall to the ground, it allows the insects to
Speaker 2: reproduce and not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1: I was like, what do these maggots turn into? And
Speaker 1: the most common species in the US is Ragalitis pomenella,
Speaker 1: which pupate and emerge as flies smaller than house fly,
Speaker 1: bigger than a fruit fly, with kind of zebra striped wings.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, okay, what are the flies called?
Speaker 1: And they're called apple maggots, even though they're in adult form,
Speaker 1: which honestly is a little infantilizing, but maybe to them
Speaker 1: it's cool, like a rap name, like a little baby.
Speaker 1: I like to think that they're in an apple just
Speaker 1: doing sexy bo rles or maybe the worm. Also side note,
Speaker 1: the singer and beloved genius Fiona Apple was born Fiona
Speaker 1: Apple Maggart and yes she did grow up in the
Speaker 1: big Apple. Onward, patron Abby asked what can I do
Speaker 1: with crab apples? It makes me sad to see them
Speaker 1: on the ground, too many for even the squirrels. An
Speaker 1: earl of Gramblecin echoed this question, but without the mention
Speaker 1: of the squirrels or sadness. Well, Paul Hoffman wanted to know,
Speaker 1: don't eat apples that have fallen on the ground. Why
Speaker 1: is that a myth? Or should you not need fallen apples?
Speaker 2: Uh? No, we don't allow fallen apples to be used
Speaker 2: in products because there is a particular fungus that someone
Speaker 2: recently discovered that isn't inactivated by heat. So you could
Speaker 2: pick up what we call drops and you could wash them,
Speaker 2: but sometimes the fungus can go into the center of
Speaker 2: the apple. So if you see a moldy core, that
Speaker 2: can cause a product called patulin, which is not good
Speaker 2: to have in food products.
Speaker 1: So the micotoxin pachulin has some evidence as a carcinogen,
Speaker 1: and it can withstand temperatures up to one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety four fahrenheit or ninety degrees celsius. The scariest of
Speaker 1: ghoules this season. And apple fungus spook uber more like sportber.
Speaker 1: That's scared.
Speaker 2: But this pathogen, this fungus that doesn't get heat inactivated.
Speaker 2: You could make hardsider, you could make cider, you could
Speaker 2: make apple sauce or apple butter, and despite using heat,
Speaker 2: it's gonna stay alive. It's alive, and so it's just
Speaker 2: easier to throw those fruit out. The other thing is,
Speaker 2: when you think about it, if fruit drop and apples,
Speaker 2: deer love apples. Guess who's been visiting around that soil site,
Speaker 2: so you don't want that would be a form of E.
Speaker 2: Coli If there were droppings on the ground near your apple.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, so not worth it, right, not worth it?
Speaker 1: What about? Nicole Hilton said when their daughter was three
Speaker 1: years old, they gave her a whole apple to eat
Speaker 1: as a snack and then they were like, where's the core?
Speaker 2: And She's like, I ate it?
Speaker 1: So can you eat the seeds? Listen, a lot of
Speaker 1: you tremble in the face of apple seeds, and I
Speaker 1: get it. Spencer, James Park's, Jessica Fewler, Matt Herschel, Elisaku,
Speaker 1: James Nance, I mean Lance, Oliver, Alice, Andrea Delvin, amyb
Speaker 1: Natalie Murphy, Henry Ever, Destiny, Tiny Nature, Lizzy and leastof
Speaker 1: Elison Menard, Rachel, Brendan Prixley. First time question ask Aer
Speaker 1: s D Lennox, Kelsey Laura wants to know are their
Speaker 1: apples that are poisonous? Can you eat the seeds? What's
Speaker 1: going on with apple seeds?
Speaker 2: Okay? So a lot of different plants produce compounds that
Speaker 2: allow the plant to survive the seeds to survive, So
Speaker 2: apple seeds, plum apricot seeds have some compounds that can
Speaker 2: get metabolized into some things similar to cyanide, but we're
Speaker 2: not talking. You know, eat an apple seed, doe. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys remember, but they used
Speaker 2: to use leayatril from apricot kernels to use as a
Speaker 2: form for preventing cancer or fighting cancer. So I had
Speaker 2: somebody call me up and say, doctor Brown, how many
Speaker 2: apple seeds should I eat to prevent cancer? And I said,
Speaker 2: you're using the doctor and my name too literally. You
Speaker 2: know I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: Just to side note, the average person would have to
Speaker 1: finally crush and consume the seeds of about twenty apples
Speaker 1: to do actual harm to themselves. So if you acidentally
Speaker 1: swallow one here and there, just remain chill. You're going
Speaker 1: to be okay.
Speaker 2: It was fine that your daughter ate the core. It
Speaker 2: passed through undamaged probably or broken up. But the seeds
Speaker 2: have to be bitten or blended, So like making smoothies,
Speaker 2: don't throw the core in there because it's likely to
Speaker 2: get broken up. But you would have to eat massive
Speaker 2: amounts of apple seeds to have a negative reaction.
Speaker 1: Okay. I wonder if anyone's ever tried to do any
Speaker 1: poisonings via apple slush. I imagine it would not taste
Speaker 1: very good to get enough.
Speaker 2: No, I've not ever heard of any apple seed poisonings.
Speaker 1: That's good. No suspicious circumstances, foul play. A ton of
Speaker 1: people wanted to know. Beth Andngerer, Alicia King, Scarlet, p
Speaker 1: Amy Hickman, Holly Coole, Ellen fan Page, Van Horn does
Speaker 1: the phrase and apple a day, keep the doctor away. I
Speaker 1: know you're a doctor, but you just gave us the
Speaker 1: caveat that you are not here to decide that advice
Speaker 1: for legal reasons. But like polyphenols antioxidants.
Speaker 2: My graduate student looked at there's certain compounds that are
Speaker 2: only found in apple, are found in a high degree
Speaker 2: in apple, and they're called dihydro chocones, which is a mouthful,
Speaker 2: and they work with glucose metabolism, and so they're actually
Speaker 2: being investigated for diabetes and glucose in your bloodstream. I've
Speaker 2: had people that say once they started eating an apple
Speaker 2: a day, they're a one c lowered. Gold's Gym used
Speaker 2: to say eat an apple, you'll lose weight, because if
Speaker 2: you eat an apple before a meal, you're more prone
Speaker 2: to eat less. But there are so many beneficial compounds
Speaker 2: in apple. Quercatin is something that's good for mental health.
Speaker 2: But I'm not necessarily the test case for that. I'll
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it makes you happy to have a
Speaker 1: snapdragon crunch, I'd say that's an antidepressant effect right there.
Speaker 2: That's right. And the fiber and they say she ate.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of truth to that saying.
Speaker 1: And the saying originated in nineteen sixty six as the
Speaker 1: aphorism eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll
Speaker 1: keep the doctor from earning his bread, which honestly sounds
Speaker 1: more anti doctor than pro apple. But is it true.
Speaker 1: Let's check the literature. So there exists this twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: Journal of American Medicine paper titled Association between Apple consumption
Speaker 1: and physician visits and these Glorious Souls surveyed over eight
Speaker 1: thousand people and found that nine percent of them ate
Speaker 1: an apple a day. And though the apple eaters tended
Speaker 1: to have higher levels of education and lower levels of smoking.
Speaker 1: Quote evidence does not support that an apple a day
Speaker 1: keeps the doctor away. However, Hello, Preventive medicine visits are
Speaker 1: much different than a guy riding a horse to your
Speaker 1: house for some blood letting, and the small fraction of
Speaker 1: US adults who eat an apple a day do appear
Speaker 1: to use fewer prescription medications, the study found, and another
Speaker 1: paper found that in patients over fifty, an apple a
Speaker 1: day had comparable effects to statin drugs in lowering LDL cholesterol. Apparently,
Speaker 1: apples have a bunch of phenolic acids and antioxidants, and
Speaker 1: a lot of goodness is in the peels, so consider
Speaker 1: keeping those on. I myself like the peel part of
Speaker 1: the apple best, and when people peel apples, I have
Speaker 1: on many occasions ask to eat the bowl of peels,
Speaker 1: and as a result, I'm likely immortal. Just take a
Speaker 1: nibble out of studies such as the twenty thirteen paper
Speaker 1: whole apple extracts increase lifespan, help span and resistance to
Speaker 1: stress and see Elegance Nematodes in the Journal of Functional Foods,
Speaker 1: and the study notes that animals pre treated with whole
Speaker 1: apple extracts were more resistant to stresses such as heat,
Speaker 1: uv radiation, herbicide induced oxidative stress, and pathogenic infection, suggesting
Speaker 1: that cellular defense and immune system functions are also improved,
Speaker 1: and they continue. Our findings indicate that in cea elegance,
Speaker 1: whole apple extracts slow aging, extend lifespan, improve health span,
Speaker 1: and enhance resistance to stress. Okay, granted this wasn't worms. Hey,
Speaker 1: as we learned in the bentopologic neumatology episode, we're using
Speaker 1: c elegance to find all kinds of weird, spooky shit.
Speaker 1: That's so good to know. I love apples. I actually
Speaker 1: have a bunch of my refrigerator, and there are a
Speaker 1: ton of people Katemunker, Emily, Carl Hanky, Kylo c also
Speaker 1: Scarlet P. Want to know what's the best way to
Speaker 1: store apples? Is it in the fridge?
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely so. When you store them out in a
Speaker 2: bowl on the table, they're going to go downhill pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: But if you could keep them in a crisper drawer
Speaker 2: in your refrigerator, or if you have a spare refrigerator,
Speaker 2: they can be put in a plastic bag, but it
Speaker 2: should have holes in it. You don't want to store
Speaker 2: apples snare onions. We'll pick up the bad flavor. And
Speaker 2: for some reason, apples and carrots are counter indicated in
Speaker 2: terms of storring together, but they'll last so much longer.
Speaker 1: So yes, the gentle farting of ethylene out of apples
Speaker 1: can make your adjacent oranges with her faster. And even carrots, lettuce,
Speaker 1: and broccoli are susceptible to apple influencers. But don't blame
Speaker 1: it at the apples. They don't deserve you as a hater.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a guest on here, a dendrologist
Speaker 1: who is a fan fave, and Casey Klapp loves trees
Speaker 1: notoriously hates apple trees.
Speaker 3: Apples are just completely pointless. But it's just like like
Speaker 3: everyone who buys apples and like I'm gonna eat it
Speaker 3: as a snack. I'm like, you're just gonna get hungry.
Speaker 3: You should bring cheese. You should at least get cheese
Speaker 3: and some peanut butter. I'm not gonna eat it.
Speaker 1: But I've never heard someone who was such an apple fox.
Speaker 1: Casey Clapp thinks that apples are an elaborate propaganda campaign,
Speaker 1: and for what I guess for apple industry, I think
Speaker 1: maybe he is opposed to the Johnny appleseed apocryphy stories perhaps,
Speaker 1: but pop Smith wants to know. You know, Casey's not
Speaker 1: a big man. He just wants to know if you
Speaker 1: maybe could take him in a one on one combat,
Speaker 1: if that's something that you would be willing to do,
Speaker 1: an arm wrestle. Maybe I thought this, if I convince
Speaker 1: him to love apples.
Speaker 2: Well, let's hope. So you should try more apples. But
Speaker 2: we have people that only look at kale or only
Speaker 2: look at grapes, and we have running commentary back and
Speaker 2: forth about fruits and vegetables and which is superior. But
Speaker 2: most of the vegetables that you're eating are actually fruits,
Speaker 2: so we win.
Speaker 1: Just in case you've never heard the classic Spootober episode
Speaker 1: about pumpkins, let us just dip real quick into that
Speaker 1: convo about cucurbatology with the esteemed and Copeland, author of
Speaker 1: the book Pumpkin, Pumpkin. And now, what about some varieties
Speaker 1: of pumpkins?
Speaker 4: Oh, there are a lot, a lot, a lot of
Speaker 4: pumpkin varieties. Now, a pumpkin is not a typical fruit.
Speaker 4: It's also not a vegetable. Oh, not a vegetable. It's
Speaker 4: a fruit, not well, sort of a pumpkin believe it
Speaker 4: or not, is a berry? Oh what, it's a berry? Well,
Speaker 4: why it's a berry? Because it said I'm going to
Speaker 4: be a berry And it's very true.
Speaker 5: It's a freakin berry, y'all. It's a frickin berry. And
Speaker 5: I looked it up. And so are cucumbers. And avocados
Speaker 5: are a berry. Bananas are a berry. Eggplants are a berry.
Speaker 5: These are berries. They are fleshy seeded fruits. They're formed
Speaker 5: from a single flower containing one ovary boom berries.
Speaker 1: Anne says.
Speaker 5: The biggest fum flam she's here to debunk is that
Speaker 5: pumpkins are not a vegetable.
Speaker 1: You win. I am going to get Casey's opinion and
Speaker 1: see because we recorded that years ago, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's gotten a lot of clapback. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: send him some of your research and see if he
Speaker 1: has a statement if he wants to correct that. End
Speaker 1: this just in Casey Klopp was available for comment, and
Speaker 1: you'll have to listen until the very end to learn
Speaker 1: his current thoughts on apples.
Speaker 2: But no arm wrestling. I broke my shoulder a year ago.
Speaker 1: So hey, that's off the table. Off the table. No
Speaker 1: arm wrestling at all. Maybe it'll be a battle of wits.
Speaker 1: And you know, I always ask the last things. I
Speaker 1: always ask her the hardest part about your job, or
Speaker 1: maybe if you have a least favorite apple or something
Speaker 1: that's just even though you have like the best job
Speaker 1: in the world, there's got to be something annoying about it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, meetings, meetings, PaperWorks reports. I mean my mom
Speaker 2: was cute because she said, what do you do in
Speaker 2: the winter, And I said, write papers, write reports, and
Speaker 2: she goes, they paid write. So you know, I love
Speaker 2: being out in the orchard. I love talking with growers,
Speaker 2: talking with consumers. So that's the highlight. But you know,
Speaker 2: everybody always goes, oh, it must be so beautiful to
Speaker 2: be out here, But on a day like today in
Speaker 2: the fall, it was gorgeous. But we're out there when
Speaker 2: it's raining, when they're sleeping, you know. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot to that. But for me, it's the fascination with
Speaker 2: everything that you can discover. And we have colleagues, you know,
Speaker 2: they'll come down and we said, we're playing detective today.
Speaker 2: We're going to try to figure out this problem and
Speaker 2: you can impact the industry as well, and consumers benefit.
Speaker 2: But when you're asking favor. I'm going to tell people
Speaker 2: to try different apples outside of their comfort range because
Speaker 2: there's a good chance that if you grow up eating
Speaker 2: Macintosh or gold and Delicious, you like that apple, but
Speaker 2: your kids might like something different, and so that's important.
Speaker 2: And then in terms of least favor apple, no, if
Speaker 2: I say it, I'm going to get nasty letters.
Speaker 1: Can you say what guys don't like about it?
Speaker 2: Well, so I'm not a big fan of Rome Beauty.
Speaker 1: Okay, we got it out of her.
Speaker 2: Which is a big apple in Ohio and it is
Speaker 2: a good processing apple. But I told the growers when
Speaker 2: we were releasing these apples, just give me some of
Speaker 2: your role makriage.
Speaker 1: Like I think we're done, We're done growing as many
Speaker 1: of those. Well, you know, and I should ask first
Speaker 1: time question asker Abbi Lawson. I will throw in one
Speaker 1: more listener question here wants to know what are your
Speaker 1: favorite things to do with a glut of apples? So
Speaker 1: many people want to know, like in Anika's kat Aria,
Speaker 1: does the pomologists have any good recipe to use apples
Speaker 1: in the fall? What is your favorite recipe? What do
Speaker 1: you recommend?
Speaker 2: Okay, so time to be truthful because my children will
Speaker 2: write in an apple breeder, any apple breeder, any fruit breeder,
Speaker 2: tends not to make a lot of products with their
Speaker 2: prop Because I eat apples from sunrise to sunset, I
Speaker 2: turn green, and the last thing I want to do
Speaker 2: is make a pie. I'm getting better now that you
Speaker 2: know the kids are older. But I worked with Amy
Speaker 2: Traverso on a cookbook Owen Woolier. There's so many good cookbooks.
Speaker 2: If you go to your state's Apple Association or the
Speaker 2: US Apple Association, there's free apple recipes online. You know,
Speaker 2: apple crisp is something really easy to do, sauteed apples
Speaker 2: with cinnamon and freshwooped cream. I say, the easier, the better.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to peruse this very detailed and smart
Speaker 1: guide to apple recipes, it's called The Apple Lover's Cookbook,
Speaker 1: and we'll link in the show notes, and please send
Speaker 1: me your pies. Just getting done because I check my
Speaker 1: po box like every three weeks.
Speaker 2: Honestly, but for a while, my kids used to have
Speaker 2: to remind me to bring apples home because while I
Speaker 2: was enjoying them, they weren't getting a home.
Speaker 1: They're like, Mom, you should have a purse full of apples.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Come on, do people ever ask you, as a doctor
Speaker 1: of pomology, if there's something about knowledge in an apple,
Speaker 1: if that a biblical story is somehow rings true for
Speaker 1: pomologists that the more apples they eat, the smarter they get.
Speaker 2: I have enough people that would give me grief, so
Speaker 2: they would argue against that adage. It probably loosens some
Speaker 2: of those IQ.
Speaker 1: Points and sides that must drive you crazy. Because I
Speaker 1: understand it was a pomegranate. Something got mistranslated, right.
Speaker 2: Right, The words in Latin were very similar.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess palm and palm de taire and pomology
Speaker 1: they're all in the same family there, right right. Oh,
Speaker 1: this has been such a joy. I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: how excited I am I got to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I'm having a real fan girl moment. You're just like
Speaker 1: such a huge name and genius.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Now, this has been phenomenal, And
Speaker 2: you know, just remember that so I always say support
Speaker 2: your local farmer, but also that there's people like me
Speaker 2: and every crop they eat, so when you sit down
Speaker 2: to dinner, some crazy man or woman spends half their
Speaker 2: life trying to improve that crap for you.
Speaker 1: Eat your fruits and veggies, love your fruits and veggie.
Speaker 2: That's right. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: So ask kind people crispy questions and shine one on
Speaker 1: your thigh for doctor Susan K. Brown and I hope
Speaker 1: you're about to layer some plaids. Go out hit an orchard.
Speaker 1: I myself plan on being cozy even if I get
Speaker 1: heat stroke. And there are links on our website at
Speaker 1: aliboard dot com slash Ologies slash Palmology with more about
Speaker 1: Susan and her work and links to so many studies
Speaker 1: we discussed, as well as links in the show notes,
Speaker 1: and we're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm alli
Speaker 1: word with one L on both. We have Smologies episodes
Speaker 1: which are shorter kid friendly versions that are safe for
Speaker 1: all ages. Those are linked in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you Zek Rodriguez, Thomas Terre at Sleeper, and of
Speaker 1: course Mercedes Maitland for working on those. Aaron Talbert admin's
Speaker 1: the Ologies podcast Facebook group, and I've known her since
Speaker 1: we were four and one of my favorite mems together
Speaker 1: is taking a field trip to Apple Hill outside of Plasterville, California,
Speaker 1: when we were just taughts. You know, if I had
Speaker 1: a time machine, I'd go back and visit those days.
Speaker 1: Noel Worth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our
Speaker 1: ever powerful managing director who also fact checks, make sure
Speaker 1: everyone gets paid and handles merch. Emily White of the
Speaker 1: Word Toy makes our professional transcripts Kelly ar Dwyer works
Speaker 1: on the website. Happy birthday to the fanciest of Nancy's
Speaker 1: Your Podgram, who celebrated on October sixteenth, and many thanks
Speaker 1: to lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, who travels
Speaker 1: long and widening road every week to make sure these
Speaker 1: episodes reach their destination, which is your brain. Nick Thorburn
Speaker 1: wrote the theme music and if you stick around to
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, I promised you the thoughts
Speaker 1: of Dendrology. Episode guest and co host of his own
Speaker 1: tree themed podcast, Completely Arbitrary, Casey Clap I reached out
Speaker 1: and within an hour or two I opened my email
Speaker 1: to an audio message from him.
Speaker 3: What's up, Aali, this is Casey Clapp talking to you
Speaker 3: about apples. You reached out, I am happy to have
Speaker 3: a conversation or at least present to you a little
Speaker 3: bit of my thoughts. First off, my thoughts on apples.
Speaker 3: Nothing's changed in the day to day. They're a freak
Speaker 3: of nature, is what I'm saying. However, I have recently,
Speaker 3: and I specifically, we went back and redid our episode
Speaker 3: on the apple tree, and you know what, I have
Speaker 3: to admit in the grand scheme, my opinion on apples
Speaker 3: has changed because I learned that the original apple, the
Speaker 3: og apple from Kazakhstan, had a fascinating history of development
Speaker 3: through the peoples that used to live there and still
Speaker 3: do today and still have apples as a huge part
Speaker 3: of their culture. And now we have bred these apples
Speaker 3: in this you know, strange wild way that we do today.
Speaker 3: So the apple as.
Speaker 2: We know it.
Speaker 3: Are you gonna plant an apple in your house and
Speaker 3: eat all of them because you think you're gonna have
Speaker 3: a nice orchard, Probably not plant a big tree that's
Speaker 3: gonna do cool stuff anyway, and just let an orchard
Speaker 3: just take care of the really, you know, the intense
Speaker 3: apples that everyone loves. And I think the apple is
Speaker 3: a wonderful example of how animals and humans and time
Speaker 3: and plant all have worked together to create this thing
Speaker 3: that now today is a monstrosity. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I guess you. I guess yeah. I just go back
Speaker 3: and forth. Anyway, Apples are pretty cool. In fact, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna eat one right now just because well I have one.
Speaker 5: I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1: Casey Clapp co host of Completely Arbitrary alongside Alex Crosson,
Speaker 1: who is also a really good musician. And I've listened
Speaker 1: to Alex's latest album, Sorry I Missed You probably several
Speaker 1: hundred times. Good dudes. Also, I think Casey, I think
Speaker 1: he just has a really fast metabolism and requires some
Speaker 1: protein with the snacks, and that's not the Apple's fault,
Speaker 1: but we should do a study on it. Also, one
Speaker 1: more secret. I had been really, really sick the last
Speaker 1: few months, and one day I got some mail from
Speaker 1: my sister Janelle, and it was a bunch of Halloween
Speaker 1: socks because I love Halloween socks. That made me so happy,
Speaker 1: And also in the package was a bag of sour
Speaker 1: green apple gumballs. For a second, I was mystified. I
Speaker 1: was like, why did she send me these? Then I
Speaker 1: remembered when she first got her driver's license and I
Speaker 1: was fourteen. We would run errands to the store for
Speaker 1: my mom, but take every back road possible. And just
Speaker 1: drive around listening to this old YouTube tape. And then
Speaker 1: at the store they had those gumball machines, so for
Speaker 1: a quarter I'd get a green apple one, and then
Speaker 1: on the ride home, I would chew it, and I
Speaker 1: would blow the green apple favor into Janelle's face because
Speaker 1: the little sisters are the worst, and she would plead
Speaker 1: with me not to. But then I became tradition. So
Speaker 1: last month when I opened this care package to see
Speaker 1: these green apple gumballs, oh, it all came rushing back
Speaker 1: and my heart leapt and I've been chewing them and
Speaker 1: those times driving around with my sister in the summer
Speaker 1: with a window down apple gumball fumes in the breeze. Man,
Speaker 1: that's another stop on the old Alley word time machine
Speaker 1: of classic mams. Okay, go have a snack, but not
Speaker 1: if it's been rotting on the ground. Okay, Hoppe, you
Speaker 1: speak to a Berberby pacadermatology, hombology, crypto zoology, lithology, zerology, meteorology, pology, anthology, seriology, elinology.
Speaker 1: Do you like apples?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I got a number. How do you like
Speaker 2: their maps