GRAND RAPIDS — It was a great season for apples in Northeastern Minnesota.
Orchard goers and backyard tree growers reaped the benefits, but not without all the hard work of picking seemingly endless fruit.
Minnesotans take a special pride in apples because of the University of Minnesota’s invention of Honeycrisp, now the state fruit.
You may have heard the story of Honeycrisps’ unlikely ascendence. In case you haven’t, here’s the quick version:
Our beloved apple was almost thrown out in the late ‘70s.
David Wildung was the horticulturist at the university’s North Central Research and Outreach Center in Grand Rapids for almost four decades. He recounted the Honeycrisp tale at an apple tasting event at the center this fall.
“David Bedford essentially drug it [Honeycrisp] out of storage, and he saw some merit in it,” Wildung said.
Bedford is an apple breeder for the U of M, based at the Horticultural Research Center at the university’s Landscape Arboretum.
The U tests thousands of seedlings each year, and Honeycrisp showed some winter damage. But Bedford didn’t think it got a fair shot, being that the injury came in a rougher-than-usual winter, and the tree was planted in a poor site.
In 1982, on a whim, he rescued Honeycrisp from its discarded status and gave it another chance.
Honeycrisp was eventually released in 1991, the U’s first apple variety, and the rest is history. Honeycrisp reshaped the apple market, and it’s now the most grown apple in the country.
But you might not have heard the in-between. How did Honeycrisp make its way from rescued to released? That's where Grand Rapidians can get an extra bragging point in the Honeycrisp pride.
“Honeycrisp: Everybody knows it. And then I tell people, ‘Oh, well now I’m working at the station that they did all the tests and everything and the experiments on it,’” said Jonathan Stelling, who started as NCROC’s director of operations in September. “People are like, ‘No, really?’”
The North Central Research and Outreach Center is a bit of an unsung hero in this saga. NCROC is the northernmost research center in the Lower 48.
“Which gives it a very good opportunity to evaluate hardiness, and that’s the primary thing,” Wildung explained.
So, NCROC's work isn’t just important for Minnesota, but pretty much anywhere crops need to survive hard winters.
The winter of 1995-96 was brutal, with temps plunging to 50 below and above average snowfall.
“We lost about 80% of the trees up there [in the orchard]. Honeycrisp survived,” Wildung said. “We had young trees of Honeycrisp. And that was the first that people realized that it might have more hardiness than it was first thought it would be.”
Without that realization, Honeycrisp might never have made it to market and become the behemoth it is today.
“When you would go to the supermarkets, people would indiscriminately pick up apples,” Wildung said. “Now they’re looking for varieties. It’s fun for me to see, ‘Oh, they’re seeking out Honeycrisp. There it is. We’re going to pay for it.’ Even though they’re paying a premium price for it.”
It’s considered the gold standard for taste and texture. While today, it has the highest production of any apple variety by far, Washington State University’s Cosmic Crisp is quickly catching up.
Our state fruit was bred for flavor, not farming. And it’s turned out to be quite a pain to grow.
Most of the country's apples come from Washington, and its warmer climate has led to a drop in quality for Honeycrisps.
Agricultural researchers continue to use Honeycrisp to develop new varieties — ones that might be a bit easier to grow. Cosmic Crisp is one of those descendants. So is Kudos, the newest of the U’s 29 varieties, released in 2023.
Kudos is a descendant of Honeycrisp and Zestar. Attendees at NCROC’s apple tasting event chose it as their favorite in a blind taste test, ahead of even Honeycrisp.
It’ll be a few years before you can expect to see Kudos in a grocery store. But you’ll likely keep seeing more Honeycrisp descendants.
If you want a chance to try Kudos sooner or other unique apple varieties, check your local orchard.
