Can They Invent New Apple Varieties To Withstand New Climate Extremes, Like Vermont's Devastating Spring Freeze?

A wild apple tree on a St. Albans, Vermont property
adjacent to mine managed to yield a good crop
for the deer this year. Many other apple trees in
Vermont had low or no yields due to an 
intense May freeze. People are trying to 
develop new hybrids that can withstand
climate change-induced extremes. 

From what I understand, Vermont's apple crop mostly sucked this year. 

The trees bloomed to early thanks to record heat in April. Then came a very late and intense freeze on May 18 that murdered a huge number of the nascent apples.  

As Vermont Public reported in September, Vermont lost roughly half of its apple crop this year due to the May freeze. Experts and growers are saying this is the worst freeze and apple crop failure in memory. 

It was an uneven disaster. Some orchards lost almost their entire crop for 2023.  Others, especially near Lake Champlain, were unscathed and actually had a great harvest this autumn. 

We weren't the only ones who struggled with an apple shortage due to weather this year.

World apple production is expected to be down by almost five percent this year, according to the Washington Post.  Last year's United States harvest was the weakest since 2013. Heat waves damaged crops in Washington State, China and elsewhere. Storms wrecked New Zealand's crops. 

A bacterial disease called fire blight is damaging apple crops, too.

The Washington Post tells us that two new apple varieties, developed by researcher Chris Walsh at the University of Maryland, might solve some of the problems with apple crops.

Per WaPo:

"Walsh had an ambitious goal: develop apples that were heat-tolerant but also fire blight-resistant, and on trees short enough to be easily pruned or harvested from the ground."

The new varieties are heat resistant, which is great. People (including me!) love a crunchy crisp apple, and are kinda grossed out by a mushy, mealy one.  Heat waves tend to give us mushy, mealy.  The new apples would survive heat waves and still end up being satisfying at harvest time. 

This doesn't solve the problem like weird early spring bloomings followed by late frosts, or storms that wreck trees or at least knock all the apples to the ground before they can be harvested. But it's a start. And maybe some scientists and growers can develop varieties that resist frost. Or at least bloom so late that frosts and freezes are less likely to affect them. Who knows?

We don't know yet when these two new varieties, which don't yet have warm fuzzy marketable names yet, will be in grocery stores. But Walsh says they'll at least be available at pick-your own orchards and farmers markets as soon as September, 2026.

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, we can hope we don't get weird early spring heat waves and no late frosts in 2024.