Red Delicious

The Red Delicious is an apple that was recognized in Wellsburg, Iowa in 1880. As the cultivar was optimized for color and durability for major supermarket chains, taste was sacrificed, and consumers began to reject the Red Delicious.

History

It originated at an orchard in 1880 as "a round, blushed yellow fruit of surpassing sweetness". Stark Brothers Nurseries‎ held a competition to find an apple to replace the Ben Davis apple. The winner was Jesse Hiatt, a farmer in Wellsburg, Iowa. He had recognized a cultivar he called "Hawkeye". The Starks bought the rights from Hiatt and renamed the cultivar "Delicious". The Golden Delicious was found growing in Grundy County, Iowa in 1914, and the Delicious became Red Delicious as a retronym.

In the 1980s Red Delicious represented three-quarters of the harvest in Washington state. In the 1990s reliance on Red Delicious pushed Washington state's apple industry to the edge of bankruptcy. In 2000 Congress approved and President Bill Clinton bailed the apple industry, after apple growers lost $760 million since 1997.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title='Perfect' Apple Pushed Growers Into Debt |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E5DF1439F937A35752C1A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all |quote=Losses piled up. And now the bill has come due. Last month, Congress approved and President Clinton signed the biggest bailout in the history of the apple industry, after the government reported that apple growers had lost $760 million in the last three years. ... In trying to create the perfect apple for major supermarket chains, these farmers say, they may have sacrificed taste to cosmetics. The growers say their story is like a fable with lessons for how the nation produces its fresh food. |work=New York Times |date=November 4, 2000 |accessdate=2008-08-02 ] By 2000, this cultivar made up less than one half of the Washington state output, and in 2003, the crop had shrunk to 37 percent of the state's harvest, which totaled 103 million boxes. Red Delicious still remains the single largest cultivar produced in the state, but others are growing in popularity, notably Fuji apples and Gala apples.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is. Decades of Makeovers Alter Apple to Its Core. |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080402194.html |quote=The reliance on Red Delicious helped push Washington's apple industry to the edge in the late 1990s and into this decade. Depressed prices for Red Delicious, weaker foreign markets and stiffer competition from abroad, including apple concentrate from China, contributed to major losses in the nation's apple industry, which mounted to $700 million in 2001, according to the U.S. Apple Association. The industry has recovered somewhat since then, in part because reduced harvests have buoyed prices. | work=The Washington Post |date=August 5, 2005 |accessdate=2008-07-27 ]

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