Calories in Apple

What makes apple so powerful?

The wild ancestor of the domesticated apple, Malus sieversii, still grows in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan, and genetic studies have shown that most modern apple varieties trace their lineage to these ancient forests. Unlike many crops that can be propagated from seed, apples are extremely heterozygous: the seeds of a Honeycrisp apple will not grow into a tree that produces Honeycrisp apples. Every named apple variety is effectively a single clone, maintained through grafting onto rootstock rather than grown from seed. This is why Johnny Appleseed's legendary plantings produced mostly cider apples, not eating apples—trees grown from seed yield unpredictable, often bitter fruit. The genetic diversity within wild Malus sieversii populations gives breeders the raw material for new varieties like Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp. But because each cultivated apple is a genetic clone, a disease that successfully attacks one tree of a variety can potentially threaten every tree of that same variety worldwide, a vulnerability similar to what nearly wiped out the Gros Michel banana.