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