Poor apple crop blamed on early spring, late freeze

Skip to content (Image credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Transcript: It’s apple picking season. But in Virginia, Maryland, and other mid-Atlantic states, many orchards have far less fruit than normal. An unusually warm spring caused many trees to bloom early. Then an extreme cold snap in April destroyed those tender flowers and young fruit. Walsh: “I’ve been involved with this business for almost 50 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. … I was at an orchard in Virginia, in Winchester, and we were out in the field looking at trees that are just basically all leaves. There’s not a crop on any of them.” Chris Walsh is a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who has been breeding apples for decades. He’s focused on breeding for disease resistance and heat tolerance, traits that matter more as the climate warms. Walsh: “I wasn’t really looking for freeze tolerance.” But one of the varieties he patented unexpectedly survived the April freeze better than the others in the same research orchard – perhaps because it was bred from GoldRush, a variety known for cold tolerance. Walsh says he’ll keep monitoring this new variety to see how it performs in future years. And as he continues breeding, he’ll think more about the threat of erratic spring weather. Walsh: “We have a lot to worry about as people who are trying to breed for the orchard of the future.” Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media