Features
The Lighter Side of Apples
U of G apple-branding idea bears fruit for campus promoters ¾ and one bean researcher
BY ANDREW VOWLES
It's not exactly a hard-core research project. But an idea for a promotional gimmick using U of G-branded apples has turned a few heads at student recruitment events this fall. And a crop of these special “UG apples” has even given one Guelph researcher an unlooked-for angle on his studies of cranberry beans, part of a market worth roughly $20 million a year for Ontario bean growers.
You might have seen the branded apples, perhaps at the U of G display during this year's Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto or pictured on the University's home page. The logo shows up in green letters that appear to be stenciled onto the fruit's skin.
This summer, plant agriculture professor John Cline grew five cultivars of apples bearing the “UG” logo. He stuck specially prepared plastic stickers on about 800 individual pieces of fruit growing on dwarf trees in research station orchards at Simcoe and Vineland. Applied in mid-August, the stickers prevented the underlying green skin from turning colour as the fruit developed.
Cline picked the branded apples this fall and shared them with various groups, including U of G administrators, the Royal and campus student recruiters.
“The tricky part was at harvest time,” he says. “We had to come back and make sure the fruit was harvested out.”
Most of the apples picked each year from some 15,000 trees at Simcoe are sold to a local fruit growers' co-op, with revenues used to help run the station. Referring to the UG apples grown on six trees this year, he says: “The odd one probably went into commercial sales. Someone in Ontario is probably wondering how this happened.”
Besides investigating an unusual promotional tool, Cline wonders whether the concept might actually add value for growers of Ontario fruit crops. He had tried a similar idea about eight years ago, a venture that worked well for the province's former apple marketing commission.
Elsewhere, he says, enterprising growers have developed fruit branded with birthday or seasonal greetings. On the downside, Cline says the process is labour-intensive and potentially expensive, and the apples themselves have a limited shelf life.
But he's had a call from someone interested in discussing marketing ideas. “I even got a call from someone who wanted to stencil apples with her and her fiancé's initials.”
The branded apples have also sparked experiments on the Guelph campus by another plant agriculture scientist now completing a research project with the Ontario Coloured Bean Growers Association.
Prof. Peter Pauls has tried to produce the same stenciling effect on already ripened fruit, using the ultraviolet lamps he employs to artificially darken cranberry beans. Growers of cranberry beans — also called romano beans — get less money for beans that darken after harvest.
After learning of Cline's experiment, he cut shapes out of paper, stuck them on apples and left the fruit overnight under UV lights. Peeling away the paper the next day, he saw an “untanned” area outlined on the apple.
Pauls says light causes fruits to produce pigments that basically work as sunscreen. He believes the same kind of biochemical pathways produce similar results in his tanned apples and in Cline's tree-ripened fruit.
“Is this a way of darkening them afterward for the producer? The connection for us was just kind of intriguing.”
He adds that using UV light on ripened produce would speed up Cline's process.
Both kinds of apples were used by U of G administrators during a recent high school science teachers' convention. Pauls figures teachers could use the experiment with students in science classes.
He's now writing a report for the bean growers group about his past two years' worth of work on screening for lines of beans that don't darken and are suitable for Ontario growing conditions.