Apple, Malum

Today, apples are at home in regions around the world and are one of the most popular types of fruit worldwide. For a long time, however, the unimaginative labelling of unknown fruits as ‘apples’ was a common occurrence in Europe, as the early explorers and conquerors often brought unknown fruit back from their travels. Science assumes that the ‘golden apples’ from Greek legends and Germanic tradition were actually citrus fruits.

About the apple tree

The apple tree (Malus domestica) belongs to the rose family. The deciduous tree grows to a height of around 10-15 meters. You can recognise an apple tree by its egg-shaped leaves with serrated edges. The flowers of the tree are white-pink and both female and male flowers can be found on the same tree – it is therefore a monoecious tree. The apples themselves are pseudo-fruits, as the flesh is formed from the base of the flower, in which the actual fruit, the casing with the seeds, is embedded.

Almost all apple varieties are cross-pollinators. This means that the egg cells in the female part of the blossom can only be fertilised by the pollen of another apple variety. In addition to self-infertility, there is also a high degree of heterozygosity, meaning that each cross produces an apple with new individual characteristics. This means that in order to obtain a variety with approximately the same characteristics, several thousand seedlings would have to be grown from seeds from the same tree. In order to achieve the desired apple variety, cloning or grafting is therefore carried out by grafting scions, i.e. thin branches, from the desired tree onto a rootstock.

Apple trees are shallow-rooted, which is why they can also be grown on less deep soil. They prefer a loamy, humus-rich and calcareous soil, but thrive on almost all soils if they have sufficient moisture.

Although apple trees can grow in almost all plant hardiness zones, they are more likely to thrive in climates with cold winters, temperate summers and medium to high humidity than in hot and dry zones. According to existing studies, higher temperatures and longer periods of drought as a result of global warming lead to lower growth, lower yields and reduced fruit quality.

Mystical story

Around 10,000 BC, apples grew on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan, which also gave the former capital its name: ‘Almaty’, today ‘Alma-Ata’, translates as ‘city of the apple’. This Asian crab apple was still small and woody, had many seeds and tasted sour. It reached the Black Sea region via the ancient trade routes in the last millennium BC and was cultivated there by the Greeks and Romans.

The cultivated fruit was extremely expensive and was considered an aphrodisiac by the Greeks, while in the Old Testament the apple stood for the biblical fall from grace. Malum, the Latin word for apple, then led to the Latin adjective malus for bad and evil. The adjective bad is still derived from this in many (Romance) languages today. In French and Portuguese ‘mal’, in Italian ‘male’ or even in English ‘malicious’ – the apple is still present everywhere. From Italy, the apple arrived in Northern Europe around 100 BC with the Roman campaigns, where it also achieved mystical status among the Celts and Germanic tribes. For the Celts, the apple was a symbol of death and rebirth (the paradise island of Avalon means apple land), while for the Germanic tribes, the goddess Iduna watched over golden apples that could confer immortality.

Apples were already being cultivated throughout the German Rhine Valley in the first century BCE, but the fruit remained a luxury item and a symbol of power until modern times.

For thousands of years, apples were seen as a symbol of wealth, love and fertility – associations that have almost disappeared due to modern industrial mass production. Today, apples are the fourth most popular fruit in the world – after bananas, grapes and mangoes.

Apples are now grown in many places around the world. According to the FAO, almost 96 million tonnes of apples were harvested worldwide in 2022. 76.8% of this came from just 10 countries. The largest producer country, China, produced almost half of the world’s harvest, followed by Turkey (calculated in tonnes – India grows apples on larger areas than Turkey, but has lower yields).

Since China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, apples have been one of the country’s most competitive agricultural exports. However, China also has an above-average per capita consumption at home. More than half of the apples produced in China are Fuji apples, which are known for their sweetness and crunchy texture. Although there are apple trees in many different parts of the country, around 80 percent of apple production comes from the two regions of Bohai Bay and Loess Plateau. It is mostly small farmers who grow apples there and even though China is by far the largest apple producer in the world, the standards of mechanisation, irrigation and production volumes are significantly below those of other apple-producing countries. A major problem is that artificial fertilisers are affordable and small farmers fertilise their apple orchards at their own discretion, so that nitrogen and nitrate pollution in the soil lead to environmental problems.

“An Apple a Day keeps the Doctor away”

Although an apple consists of 85% water, it also contains a lot of vitamin C and B vitamins, calcium, magnesium and plenty of potassium. With a moderate proportion of sugar (11-12%) and carbohydrates (10-18%), together with a large amount of fibre, eating apples has an astringent, laxative and digestive effect.

Apples are rich in antioxidants such as polyphenols, flavonoids and carotenoids as well as amino acids, fruit acids, colourants and tannins. With their anti-inflammatory and germ-killing effects, they contribute to a reduced risk of cancer, asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders, strengthen the immune system and help prevent osteoporosis.

The health-promoting substances are mainly found in the peel. In addition, the composition of the active substances varies greatly depending on the variety, but they also vary a lot in concentration and makeup during the ripening process and storage.

Diversity under threat

It is estimated that there were more than 30,000 apple varieties in the world. It is said that 4,500 officially described varieties were already known in Europe and North America towards the end of the 19th century during the heyday of ‘pomology’. At that time, the old apples mostly grew in meadow orchards, where the fruit trees were scattered haphazardly, unlike in modern plantation cultivation.

Orchard meadows and the diversity of fruit varieties came under threat from the middle of the 20th century at the latest: the free market economy with its pursuit of economic profit led to increasingly ‘rationalised’ commercial fruit growing. This meant that the diversity of varieties had to be reduced and standardised, and cultivation and harvesting had to be converted to a yield-oriented plantation economy. In the 1970s, the clearing of old apple trees with their tall trunks and the switch to small trees growing on trellises was intensively promoted by the European Community and the market was strictly regulated. Today, tree nurseries are only allowed to offer varieties that are officially registered and described or that are protected by plant variety laws.

Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Gala and Fuji are by far the four most produced apple varieties in the world today, followed by Idared, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Braeburn, Cripps Pink and Jonathan. These classic dessert fruit varieties have been bred to produce uniformly large fruit, are easy to harvest and always taste the same – no matter which country they come from. One of the most popular types of fruit in the world has thus become an industrial product.

Today, hardly any new seedlings are consciously cultivated, but ultimately it was precisely this tradition that formed the basis for today’s diversity of varieties of all types of fruit. Traditional orchard meadows now lead a niche existence as a legally protected habitat type in many places, whose environmentally friendly use excludes the use of synthetic treatments such as pesticides and fertilisers. However, despite a new wave of interest interest, they are still endangered by development pressure and abandonment due to a lack of profitability. Protecting and strengthening this type of orchard would not only be an opportunity to revive the diversity of apple varieties, but would also provide food and shelter for over 5,000 species of animals, plants and fungi.

Sources

Guerra, Walter: Global trends in apple varieties. Link.
Wang et al (2016): Towards sustainable intensification of apple production in China – Yield gaps and nutrient use efficiency in apple farming systems. Link.
Planetwissen.de: Apple varieties. Link.
Noah’s Ark: Fruit. Of apples and pears. Link.