Honeycrisp gains notorious reputation as its market soars
“Unlike the vast majority of modern commercial produce, the Honeycrisp apple wasn’t bred to grow, store or ship well. It was bred for taste: crisp, with balanced sweetness and acidity,” Bloomberg reported. “Though it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, along the way it became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West Coast.
The Honeycrisp variety is now so popular, consumers will spend three times the cost of other apples to experience it.
“The first challenge is controlling its vigor,” said Brenda Briggs of Rice Fruit Co., which has been selling apples out of Adams County, Pennsylvania, for more than 100 years. Growers, she explains, have to train the trees so that their branches don’t get too tall too fast, with leaves that block the sunlight from the apples below.
The fruit is also vulnerable to bitter pit – small, sunken brown spots that sully an otherwise perfect orb. The flaw is a result of the trees’ inability to properly take up calcium from the soil. Growers are forced to spray their orchards with foliar calcium to boost their intake, but it’s not always enough.
The thin skin that makes those first bites so juicy is also very delicate and easily sunburned. Birds love Honeycrisps more than other apples, forcing growers to buy and install netting to keep them away.
Even if a producer manages to grow a decent crop of Honeycrisps, harvesting and storage come with additional hurdles. The variety is so delicate that the stems have to be clipped off so the apples don’t tear each other. And while other apples can go right from tree to cold storage, Honeycrisps must first spend 5-10 days being “tempered” at a mild temperature before they can be refrigerated.
“It requires growers to do a lot more work,” Nicholson said. In the end, only 55 percent to 60 percent of the fruit makes it to retail, Seetin said.