FRUIT RESEARCH

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 104, 27 January 1931, Page 8

FRUIT RESEARCH

Experiments in England

KEEPING QUALITIES

Experiments which form a part of a very real attack on the problems confronting New Zealand and other fruitgrowing countries in the Empire have been in progress at the Long Ashton Horticultural Research Station, near Bristol, for some while past under the direction of the Empire Marketing Board. One particular point that is receiving attention concerns those apples which look perfect in every way but whose brown and squashy insides sadly belie their appetising exterior. Why do some apples keep perfectly for six months and others suffer, after two months, from internal breakdown, bitter-pit or other evils? If this question could be properly answered the New Zealand grower would be saved the expense o£ shipping to the United'Kingdom market hundreds of tone of apples and other fruit destined to become valueless before it reaches the ’ consumer’s table. ... At Long Ashton a big effort is being made, with Empire Marketing Board funds, to find out what really determines the keeping qualities of fruit. Mr. T. Wallace,, who is in charge of the investigations, believes that as “the child is father to the man,” so ’ the apple s early life determines its behaviour afterward. during transport and storage. The apple’s childhood depends on the treatment of the parent tree, and Mr. Wallace is testing a large number of separate orchard factors —manurin'! treatment, age of tree, rootstock, soil moisture, thinning, pruning, bark-ringing, size of crop, time of picking and size of grading—to find their effects on the keeping and ripening qualities of apples. One of the most important influences on fruit quality and storage properties is the food of the tree, and the “fruit dieticians” at Long Ashton want to know how “diet” affects both the tree and the apple.