Red Delicious is a variety of apple with a red exterior and sweet taste. Known as "the Reds" in the industry,[1] this variety is the result of a chance seedling. It was first recognized in Madison County, Iowa, in 1872. Despite its name, it is not related to the Golden Delicious. It is available all year round and is best consumed fresh or in salads.[2] It could also make up part of the blend for apple cider.[3] Today, the name Red Delicious covers more than 50 cultivars (cultivated varieties). It was the most produced apple cultivar in the United States from 1968 until 2018, when it was surpassed by Gala.[4][5][6] It also lost that title in Canada at around the same time.[7] Even so, it remains popular in Mexico and some Asian countries.[1][8]
A 1996 study found that clones of the Red Delicious were some of the most commonly used to breed new apple varieties, behind only the McIntosh, Golden Delicious, Jonathan, and Cox's Orange Pippin. Many new varieties developed in the nations of the Pacific Rim have the Red Delicious in their pedigrees.[9]
Origins
The Red Delicious originated at an orchard in 1872 as "a round, blushed yellow fruit of surpassing sweetness" by chance seedling.[10][11]Stark Nurseries held a competition in 1892 to find an apple to replace the Ben Davis apple.[12]
The winner was a red and yellow striped apple sent by Jesse Hiatt, a farmer in Peru, Iowa, who called it "Hawkeye" in honor of his home state.[5] Stark Nurseries bought the rights from Hiatt, renamed the variety "Stark Delicious", and began propagating it. Another apple tree, later named the 'Golden Delicious', was also marketed by Stark Nurseries after it was purchased from a farmer in Clay County, West Virginia.[13] In 1914, the 'Delicious' became the 'Red Delicious' as a retronym.[11]
Rise and fall in demand
A Red Delicious apple orchard at harvest time in South Tyrol, Italy
The Red Delicious originally became popular thanks to not just its visual appeal but also its durability in storage,[14] making transportation easy.[6] Starting in the 1950s, changes in grocery buying habits led to consumers prioritizing visual appearance. "We started eating with our eyes and not our mouths," observed the pomologist and apple historian Tom Burford.[1] As a result, commercial growers increasingly selected for longer storage and cosmetic appeal rather than flavor.[11][15][5] Consumers at that time associated redness with ripeness.[8] But the selection of redder fruit caused deselection of flavor, and the genes that produced the yellow stripes on the original fruit were on the same chromosomes as those for the flavor-producing compounds.[5] Breeding for uniformity and long shelf life favored a thicker skin.[5]
While the Red Delicious had enjoyed moderate success in the market place, its popularity only took off in the mid-twentieth century.[8] It became the most popular apple in the United States during the 1940s.[16] Up until the 1970s, there were only a small number of apple varieties available for purchase at American supermarkets; these were the Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and Red Delicious apples.[17] But according to Tom Burford, it was the Red Delicious that was the most heavily promoted by Washington farmers.[17] By the 1980s, Red Delicious represented three-quarters of the harvest in Washington State.[16] Nevertheless, the selection for beauty and long storage over taste was not popular among consumers.[16] Wholesalers began searching for other apple varieties, such as the Fuji from Japan and the Braeburn and Gala from New Zealand.[17] As these competing cultivars entered supermarkets, demand for the Red Delicious declined.[15][18] In the early twenty-first century, while consumers are shifting their attention towards healthier food choices, this does not necessarily bode well for well-established apple varieties.[19] Modern North American consumers tend to prefer sweeter and crunchier varieties,[7][8][19] but the Red Delicious is deemed too bland and mealy.[3] By the 1990s, heavy reliance on the increasingly unpopular Red Delicious had been a factor driving Washington state's apple industry to the brink of collapse.[11] In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill bailing out the apple industry, after apple growers had lost $760 million since 1997.[18]
Ripe Red Delicious apples are uniformly red.
American farmers began to replace the Red Delicious in their orchards with other cultivars such as Gala, Fuji, and Honeycrisp.[5] By 2000, the Red Delicious made up less than one half of the Washington state output, and in 2003, the crop fell to 37% of the state's harvest, which totaled 103 million boxes. Although Red Delicious still remained the single largest variety produced in the state in 2005, others were growing in popularity, notably the Fuji and Gala varieties.[11][16] By 2014 the Washington Apple Commission was recommending growers plan to export 60% or more of production.[16] In 2018, the Gala overtook the Red Delicious in U.S. sales for the first time.[5] According to the U.S. Apple Association, production of the Gala grew 5.8% in 2018 compared to the previous year, whereas that of the Red Delicious fell 11%.[6] However, exporting the Red Delicious was still a viable option because other countries still had high demand for the apple.[8] In fact, the Red Delicious accounted for around half of all the apples exported by the United States in 2018.[19] However, the COVID-19 pandemic was projected to continue reducing domestic demand for the Red Delicious as many cafeterias and other typical sales points for the apple were closed.[20] By 2021, the Red Delicious accounted for only 15% of the output of Washington state.[21] Despite these challenges, during the mid-2020s, the Red Delicious remained one of the most produced apples in the United States.[22] In 2024, the Red Delicious accounted for 12.3% of the American apple market, behind only the Gala (17%).[23] However, by this time, most American-harvested Red Delicious apples were for export rather than domestic consumption.[21] Internationally, the top markets for the Red Delicious are Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Indonesia.[1]
Meanwhile, in the top apple-growing provinces of Canada (British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec), farmers have switched to the Ambrosia, Honeycrisp, and Gala.[7]
Sports (mutations)
Over the years many propagable mutations, or sports, have been identified in 'Red Delicious' apple trees.
Patented
In addition to those propagated without any patent applications (or cut out because they were seen as inferior), 42 sports have been patented in the United States:
In 1977, the application for #4159 noted the "starchy and bland taste of some of the newer varieties".
The plant patent for #4926 promoted the sport as a dwarfing interstock, a dwarfing rootstock for pears, or to produce "crab apple"-sized 'Delicious' apples.
Progeny
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Red Delicious.
Ambrosia: Golden Delicious × Starking Delicious (suspected)[25]
1 2 3 4 5 Higgins, Adrian (August 5, 2005). "Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is. Decades of Makeovers Alter Apple to Its Core". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-07-27. 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.
↑ Mulcaster, Glenn (November 3, 2009). "History of a Golden Opportunity". THE AGE Epicure. The myth-making in US horticulture that consigned Johnny Appleseed to caricature has coloured the background of the 20th century's most enduring apple.
1 2 Egan, Timothy (November 4, 2000). "'Perfect' Apple Pushed Growers Into Debt". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2018-08-24. Retrieved 2008-08-02. 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.
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Peru, Iowa, 1872
