During the recent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) public comment period on Arctic® Granny and Arctic® Golden apples, a number of re-occurring misconceptions arose which are addressed in this blog. Agricultural biotechnology, which consumers are self-admittedly uniformed about, is a complicated subject. When there’s a new
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Key points we like to make about Arctic® apples
When we started OSF in 1996, we set out to improve apple consumption. As growers, we were disturbed by declining apple demand, and that apples were not competing well against other snack foods. We also understood how browning was keeping apples out of the fresh-cut produce
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Apple history is full of science innovations (part 2 of 2)
Remember your high school science lesson about Friar Gregor Mendel’s (see picture) work in the mid 1800s to explain genetic inheritance? Well, the apple industry has been employing genetics to intentionally breed new varieties of apples for centuries, by fertilizing the blossoms of one variety of
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How’d we “make” a nonbrowning apple?
When my friends find out about my work with Arctic® apples, invariably one of the first questions they ask is: How’d we do that? That is, how’d we “make” a nonbrowning apple? Here’s what I tell them: First, a quick biochemistry lesson. When the cell of
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