Suffolk Pink apples and how they develop their colour

The effect of sunlight on helping fruit to colour up is familiar to everyone. Summer pruning is performed in part to enable light to reach the fruit so that its colour can develop. But this year, Dan Neuteboom noticed that another factor must be involved in colour development, in particular for the variety Suffolk Pink. By late August, the fruit was ready to pick, but much of it was far less coloured than is normal for this variety – whose lovely colour gave it its name. In fact, when they saw a sample of the crop, the supermarkets that stock this fruit on their shelves said that they couldn’t buy it because of its lack of colour.

Over the last couple of months, the weather has produced very hot days, and warm nights, so with a far lower temperature excursion than normal. Temperature excursion is evidently involved in the development of fruit colour, and it is this that has changed with respect to a normal year. The only solution is to leave the fruit on the tree in the hope for some cooler nights. Click to watch the video. Narration by Dan Neuteboom, camera by John Paddy.

Read more at https://realenglishfruit.co.uk
For more information on the origin of Suffolk Pink, read this web page.