Bigger Is Not Always Better When It Comes to Apples

Size has little bearing on interesting flavor — so why are they the global standard?

Photo: Tetra Images for Getty

Scan the stacks of apples at a grocery store, or in bushel baskets at the local farmer’s market, and you might notice a trend toward large varieties like Honeycrisp and Gala. Bite into the juicy, crisp, sweet flesh, and the appeal is undeniable.

They rank in the top five for production, according to USApple. But packing one in a lunch box is a challenge. The largest can weigh in at just shy of a pound, defying the 6 ounces the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers a portion. For cooking and baking, size is also an issue. What’s the standard when a recipe calls for four large? Are growers hoping large varieties will increase the average weight of a consumer’s purchase? Or is the giant apple a measure of the American appetite?

When it comes to breeding, some of the priorities are crispness, flavor, and color, optimizing growth for yield and disease resistance, and developing fruit to withstand the jostling of harvesting and shipping. “We look at all kinds of genetic markers, but size is not as much of a consideration in modern breeding programs,” says Dr. Nicholas Howard, a geneticist and apple breeder at the University of Minnesota and the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.

An average apple has 50 million cells, and genetics plays a role in their number and size. Honeycrisp is categorized as medium to large, but with specific inputs, it can be giant. “Honeycrisp has a greater capacity for taking in more water or cell elasticity,” says Howard. That’s what makes it juicy. Its owes its size to its parents: the Keepsake, a medium to large sweet apple, and a University of Minnesota cultivar, MN 1627. A modern variety — like most apples sold in supermarkets — it was released into the market in 1991 and now ranks among the top ten apples sold in America.

You can’t talk size without considering crop load, or the number of apples on a tree. Generally speaking, the more there are, the smaller the fruit. In the essay “Wild Apples,” Henry David Thoreau writes: “I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than I remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples…