How many apple varieties can you name? If you can name ten, you're doing pretty good, especially in light of the fact that there are about 7,500 known varieties. One of the reasons we have this amazing amount of varieties is that botanists and food scientists are continuously cross-breeding apples to attain better-tasting and pest- and disease-resistant fruit. Now don't panic. While the notion of scientists tampering with your food may seem scandalous, apples actually need the help of us humans to become the fruit we all enjoy. Without getting too wonky, apples do not naturally develop as we would intuitively expect (as a similar "offspring" from it's respective "parents"). So breeders add their expertise in a completely natural way to yield some of the highly desirable apple varieties we all crave (Honeycrisp, Cameo and Jonagold to name a few recently developed treasures).
Fairly new to the scene is the Prima apple. It gets it's name in part from the three schools that worked to breed the fruit - Perdue, Rutgers and (University of) Illinois. This apple was specifically bred to resist scabbing, therefore reducing the use of chemical fungicides. The Prima is a sturdy, crisp apple that's mildly sweet and resists browning when cut. In a small experiment performed while writing this post, a Prima apple core sat close by for over twenty minutes without showing any signs of browning - clearly this makes the Prima a good choice for slicing and serving with a salad or simply on a platter.
So do you think you may try one? Have you tried one already? Let us know what you think.
