EXCELSIOR, Minn. — David Bedford plucks an apple from a young tree. He bites into the fruit and chews. He is thinking hard about the apple's taste.
The apple is “perfectly good," he says. However, that is all it is. It is "not excellent — not a wow.” He tosses the apple to the ground. Then, he sprays a stripe of orange paint down the tree's trunk.
The stripe tells the orchard crew to cut down the tree. “You’re going to the firewood farm,” he says to the tree.
Bedford is an easygoing guy. However, he is unforgiving when it comes to producing the next great apple.
After many years as an apple breeder, Bedford knows what he is looking for. Unfortunately, this apple is not it. So the tree will have to go to make room for trees that could produce tastier apples.
It Is Tasty Work
Bedford works for the University of Minnesota’s apple-breeding program. During apple season, he will take a bite out of as many as 600 apples a day.
The apples he tastes are from new kinds of apple trees. The new trees are created by crossing two different types of trees. If the fruit of a new tree seems good, the tree will be saved. If not, it is back to the drawing board.
Bedford's sense of what is a good apple and what is not is important. It shapes what people find in grocery stores.
Bedford is one of the best apple breeders in the world, said grower John Jacobson. He is great at spotting the apples people will love.
Bedford does not do the job alone. He's been working with Jim Luby for 30 years.
However, the day-to-day work is done by Bedford. He is the one who tastes all those so-so apples in hopes of finding the next big thing.
Bedford makes "the decisions about what gets thrown out," Luby said. Ninety-nine out of 100 apples get tossed, he added.
We Love The Honeycrisp
The program’s biggest success is the Honeycrisp apple. The Honeycrisp was first introduced in 1991. It is now one of the most popular apples in the country. “It’s a doggone good apple,” Mark Seetin of the U.S. Apple Association said.
Bedford looks for certain things when judging apples. Appearance is not that important. Crunchiness and flavor are the two most important things, he said.
Achieving the perfect apple takes a lot of experimentation. Bedford crosses different parent trees. His hope is that their offspring will produce the perfect fruit.
His newest apple still needs a real name. For now, it is simply called MN55. The fruit will not be in markets for a couple of years, but Bedford is excited about it.
MN55 is the child of Honeycrisp and an Arkansas apple type. The result is an apple that tastes much like Honeycrisp. The new apple is also better in some ways. It grows better in hot weather and ripens earlier.
Jacobson was sure MN55 was a winner when he first tasted it in mid-August. “I ate it, and thought, ‘This is really something.’”
Bedford is now 63 years old. However, he does not want to stop working anytime soon. He wants to keep breeding apples for as long as he can.
“If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I’ll live forever,” he said with a smile.