How Apples are Stored

Ever wonder how those apples end up in your grocery store display? No, the apple fairy doesn’t bring them in and fill up the case overnight. The process is a little more involved than that to get those apples from the trees in the orchard to your grocery store.

 

Apples are harvested in the fall. When an apple is ripe it will fall off the tree. Ever notice how skinny and brown the stem is? It didn’t start out that way. It was thick and green. As the apple matured, the stem became smaller and smaller until it breaks under the weight of the ripe apple.

 

Apple orchard owners use special ladders called three-point ladders to be able to harvest all the fruit from the trees. Hundreds of pounds of fruit can be harvested from a single tree in a season. The harvesting requires a lot of time and workers to get as much fruit in as possible.

 

I’ve always been told that fruit shouldn’t be washed until it is ready to eat. Maybe the dirt preserves the fruit and slows the aging process in some way.  This is one reason why you should always wash the outside of a fruit before eating it even fresh from the tree.

 

So, how are apples available all year round if they are harvested in the fall? All of that luscious fruit would go to waste if it wasn’t for modern technology. Apples can be stored straight from the tree in one of two ways: cold storage or controlled atmosphere storage.

 

With cold storage, the apples are picked at the peak of ripeness when the fruit has reached the sweet and crisp stage. Picking too early can result in sour or mushy apples. The apples are then piled into cold storerooms in warehouses that have been cooled to thirty-two degrees but maintain a high level of humidity. The apples will ripen further, so any apple in cold storage is often sold within three or four months.

 

The other option is controlled atmosphere storage. This process is more expensive than cold storage. As apples ripen, they give consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide. In this airtight environment, the available oxygen is markedly reduced while the level of carbon dioxide is increased.

 

This technology slows, if not stalls, the ripening process. Apples can be stored for longer than mid-winter and shipped to markets all over the country. Apples in tiptop shape are rewarded with this type of storage. So when you bite into that juicy tart or tangy apple in the summer, remember that it could have been picked over half a year before.