There’s been a longtime push in the specialty crop industry to offer newer varieties with better genetics. This is no more evident than in apples, where Honeycrisp paved the way for a different eating experience and went from possible breeding project reject to farmers market darling to arguably the most widely known modern apple variety.
The challenge with a variety like Honeycrisp is that it is a difficult variety to grow, store and pack, says Rob Blakey, research and development director with Stemilt Growers.
“It’s great for the consumer, great for the retailer, but we need to match that eating experience with efficiencies in the orchards and in the pack shed,” Blakey says. “Otherwise, it doesn’t pencil. And we’re talking about sustainability; a variety has to be economically sustainable.”
While early pricing compensated for Honeycrisp’s poor efficiency, a saturated market has caused prices to collapse, and the variety isn’t as sustainable for the grower as it once was.
Setting a New Gold Standard for Variety Efficiency
Blakey’s focus at Stemilt is to evaluate new cherry, pear and apple varieties that meet modern-day consumer demands while also being something sustainable for growers, packers and shippers.
It’s a process with an extremely long view, and it all starts at Stemilt with twice-yearly meetings to examine the variety mix currently in orchards.
“We look at market performance and our orchard mix by variety, organic and conventional,” Blakey says. “What we look at is, are we in line with what we’re selling? Because we want to grow what we can sell, so we are aligning that and having direction in that way.”
Mapping the Long View of the Orchard Cycle
Blakey says the team at Stemilt then examines each commodity — apples, pears and cherries — and looks at harvest windows on each ranch. The team also studies where each orchard is in its 20-year cycle.
“As a variety is sunsetting, what’s coming in? When are we taking that orchard out? What are we replacing it with?” he says.
From there, Blakey works backward from determining what goes in where and when. That includes determining what type of rootstocks will be needed when and what variety will be grafted to the rootstock, as well as making sure there’s enough budwood to grow those trees. Then there is thinking about what scaling some of those new varieties might look like in five to six years.
For example, Blakey says he’s ordered rootstocks in the nursery to plant in 2028 with the hope that those trees will begin cropping in 2032.
Stemilt also evaluates new varieties. Blakey says that thanks to a dialed-in evaluation process, Stemilt can launch a variety in under 15 years, which is roughly half as long as it used to take.
He says a variety like Cosmic Crisp is the model for new varieties. It’s easy to grow, easy to store, easy to pack, and consumers love it.
“That’s our bar,” he says. “If it’s not delivering on that type of efficiency, it’s not going to compete. … If it’s not beating Cosmic or it’s a unique color or bringing something completely different, it won’t make it.”
For apples, Blakey says this means looking for varieties that fit a specific demand or window. For Aura apples, he says Stemilt specifically sought out a premium yellow apple.
“We launched that from cross to launch in 11 years,” he says.
Currently, Stemilt evaluates about 50 apple varieties from around the world and looks to see how those varieties grow if they have commercial potential from the orchard to packout, Blakey says.
“What we also learned from some of the new varieties that didn’t make it: They can eat good, they can store good, but they’re so delicate we can’t pack them,” he says. “We are evaluating all the critical steps, because we don’t want to be putting in money — putting in capital and growing a variety — only to find out at that stage, once we’ve put $20 million in that it doesn’t pack so well. We’d rather learn the lessons early and get rid of stuff as quickly as you can.”
And there have been many great-eating varieties in the trials that did not make it in that final step, he says. While all varieties have unique challenges, he says it’s a balance to find out whether a “quirk” is something a grower or packer-shipper could live with.
Though many growers want a proprietary apple variety, Blakey says these next-generation varieties have to be primed to succeed in a crowded category.
“This has to stand on its own as a viable product, and it costs more, but it’s a lot cheaper than a failed variety,” he says.
Flattening the Peak for a Better Cherry Season
Blakey says cherry evaluation is slightly less complicated than for apples, as there isn’t a variety attachment to cherries. It’s just a dark sweet cherry or a light-colored, rainier-type of cherry.
But the life cycle of cherry evaluations is much longer, he says, adding that he currently trials about 55 varieties throughout the world.
“I planted stuff in 2018, and I’m going to see a crop this year,” Blakey says. “It’s just a long, long cycle to get cherries.”
And for cherry trials, Blakey says it’s about seasonality. Instead of a peak, Stemilt wants to flatten the curve.
“How do we have the best varieties at each timing in each growing district to deliver that superior eating quality and have a crop and size and deliver a return to the grower?” he says. “There’s plenty of good-eating cherries that just don’t yield enough.”
Blakey evaluates aspects such as timing, rootstock, pollination, storage and shipping.
“It’s all dialed in, so when we launch, we can launch with confidence as well,” he says. “We’re always looking to go early. We’re trying to build out the early side, get a better eating experience on the early side.”
Blakey says he works with breeding programs to source early varieties as well as going as late as possible into the cherry season. This evaluation includes genetics, altitude, latitude and aspect, he explains.
While he says Stemilt has maximized altitude and aspect, genetics is where he sees the potential to improve cherry season.
“There’s new material coming out all the time that can add weeks to our program,” he says.
There’s also concern with cherry cracking and pitting, so those are also considerations for evaluation.
Blakey says a bonus with cherry evaluations is those can be sold; it doesn’t have to have a specific branding and variety around it as consumers seek out a large, firm and flavorful cherry.
He and the Stemilt team look at the current variety mix to see if there are opportunities or gaps for new varieties.
Bringing in new globally developed cherry varieties is its own challenge, Blakey notes. The budwood goes into government quarantine and evaluation to ensure the plant material is clean.
“Some varieties have taken 10 years to get out of quarantine because they couldn’t clean the material up,” he says. “It’s roughly two years, though.”
Then the nursery will take that budwood to grow a few test trees from which to pull budwood. Blakey says good paperwork is the key to keeping up with the evaluations in quarantine and in the field trials.
Moving Past the Old Model for Modern Pears
There’s an old adage that says, “Plant pears for your heirs.” And when it comes to pear breeding cycles, it’s a rather long cycle.
Pears have a juvenile period from seedling to cropping that lasts six years. The Happi pear originally was bred in 1988, Blakey points out. However, he says the pear category is ripe for innovation.
“There’s a lot of exciting pair genetics coming, just people haven’t been incentivized,” he says. “Pear growers are pretty conservative, because it just takes so long. In the old models, it would take six years before they got their first crop, 10 years before they started hitting peak production. And that one orchard was supposed to be there for 60 years.”
Blakey says a focus for him is on genetics and growing practices more in line with the future. Happi pear, for example, crops in the third year and hits peak production in the fifth or sixth year. He says that’s, in part, due to its precocious nature and its fire blight and pear psylla tolerance, which allow for more high-density plantings.
“We’re not trying to grow these big, old, steep leader trees anymore,” Blakey says. “We grow it like an apple: more trees per acre, earlier production. We get into full production earlier, which we’re paying that capital off a whole lot quicker.”
Unlike cherries and apples, Blakey says he evaluates far fewer new pear varieties, so he’s looking for the best of the best of new cultivars, as well as new and improved rootstocks that are cold-sensitive — a crucial trait. As he hopes to shorten that growth window, an orchard that could last for 60 or 100 years could recover from a once-in-50-year cold event, but that risk is higher with newer high-density plantings.
“If we’re growing an orchard for 20 years and those extreme colds are not happening as frequently and we’re growing in warmer districts, we can start looking at dwarfing rootstocks for pears,” he says.
And as with other commodities, new pear varieties need to perform well in storage and packing along with being easier to grow. Pear ripening is a significant factor in Blakey’s evaluation of new cultivars.
“Pears are more complicated,” he says. “They have to ripen, or you get a nonripening pear that’s crunchy to eat out of hand. So, how do we ripen it? It’s a big part of why we like Happi, because it ripens slowly and it doesn’t turn to mush. So, [those are] just more aspects that we have to look at.”
Future of Research and Development
As Blakey looks ahead, he says all of this R&D will help drive efficiency in the supply chain.
“How do we grow it better, we pick it better, we store it better, we pack it better?” he says. “Just with the shrinking margins, we have to be better at every single step without sacrificing an improved flavor experience.”
Blakey sees technology playing a key role in the future of new variety development.
“What excites me is that we have technology — storing technology and genetics — that we can deliver on that superior eating quality for longer in the year,” he says. “We’re not getting tired galas. We’re not getting tired Honeycrisp. We have technology to stretch the great-eating-quality window.”
