Luke Marion is on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan looking for apple trees. It’s a sunny day in March, kind of coldish with snow on the ground. When Marion finds a tree, he takes out a pair of pruners and cuts last year’s growth off the branches. Then he puts the cuttings in a carefully marked bag and into a cooler, where they will stay dormant.
There’s a chance these particular apple trees could be very rare. Beaver Island is remote. It’s 32 miles off mainland Michigan. That means these apples have possibly never bred with varieties on the mainland, which in turn means they could have genetics that have not yet been documented in apples in the U.S.
And that’s saying something.
The U.S. has the largest collection of apples in the world – about 5,000 varieties, some of them dating back to ancient Rome. We keep so many varieties because we could need them as a safeguard.
There are all these threats to apples – and the food supply in general: climate change, biological threats, bacterial disease, industrialization, preference changes, pesticides, pathogen systems and human mistakes, among others. But one key way to fight these threats is through genetic resistance. Genetic resistance requires genetic diversity. So we stockpile thousands of apple varieties.
But scientists are always on the hunt for new varieties, and these Beaver Island apples could be an answer to a future problem.
Credits:
Producer: Austin Rowlader
Host: Dan Wanschura
Editor: Morgan Springer
Mixing: Austin Rowlader, Dan Wanschura
Additional Editing: Dan Wanschura, Ellie Katz, Claire Keenan-Kurgan
Additional audio: Hannah McWhorter of Hannah Who Media
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, HOST: This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.
BUD MARTIN: Ya might get that one off up there. Is that what you’re looking at doing?
JEREMY VANSICE: Yeah, I’m dying to get this, but I don’t want to fall and end my day.
MARTIN: Oh actually there’s a couple right there, yeah.
VANSICE: Oh, I’ve got an idea.
WANSCHURA: That’s Bud Martin and Jeremy VanSice.
They’re in an abandoned apple orchard on Bud’s property on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. It’s the most remote inhabited island in the Great Lakes.
Jeremy is in the tree trying to shake an apple out of the top branches.
MARTIN: You ready?
LUKE MARION: Yah, there ya go.
MARTIN: Whoa! Smack. There’s still something left, if you’re starving it would look good.
MARION: One for you, one for me.
WANSCHURA: The last voice you heard, that was Luke Marion.
He’s the reason they’re on the island in the first place. And, right now, he’s holding onto this shriveled, brown, rotten-looking apple.
It’s March, so that means this apple has survived the whole winter in the tree. It’s kind of amazing it’s still there, actually, and no birds, or squirrels, or insects, or even other people got to it.
And so now that Luke’s holding onto this basically rotten apple, it begs the question, and I guess I don’t mean to get all Adam and Eve on you here, but should he eat the apple?
MARTIN: Are you gonna actually eat that?
MARION: I mean, I’ll eat it.
VANSICE: Oh, look at the juice running out of that puppy!
MARTIN: Wow.
MARION: It’s pretty wicked. It tastes, actually, really good. I’m not gonna lie.
WANSCHURA: Luke owns a preservation orchard in southern Michigan. He’s tall, dark hair, glasses and a big personality. But Luke didn’t travel all the way to Beaver Island just to eat some old, rotten apples. He’s there because he actually wants to save these apple trees.
Beaver Island is 32 miles from the shore in northern Michigan. That means these trees have basically been growing in a genetic vacuum. Like, they’ve probably never bred with mainland apple trees. And until now, their DNA has never been analyzed.
So these apples could contain important genes that scientists could use to fight threats to our food supply.
Reporter Austin Rowlader will take it from here.
AUSTIN ROWLADER: Eating a rotten apple off a tree in mid-March on an island in Lake Michigan doesn’t really seem to mean that much. But I want to go back to something Bud said. Here, I’ll play it back for you.
MARTIN: There’s still something left. If you were starving, it would look good.
ROWLADER: “If you were starving it would look good.” Okay, Bud and his ancestors have been on this island for generations, so he has these good, you know, island instincts.
Now let’s think back 130, 140 years ago, when some of these trees were probably planted. There wasn’t reliable transportation to the mainland, especially in March. So a few rotten apples dangling from a tree might have been the only thing saving Bud’s ancestors from starvation.
Then it’s like, duh, that might have been the whole point of planting them in the first place. It makes sense, right? A reliable source of calories late in the season that doesn’t have to be harvested or stored in a root cellar? That could be a real asset for a homesteader on a secluded island!
Now though, planes fly back and forth everyday. There’s a ferry. And you can get basically anything you want on the island, including apples. So having apples that stay on the tree late into the spring wouldn’t be as big of an asset.
But that doesn’t mean these trees don’t have useful genetic traits. They could be very rare apples. Rare as in, like, never previously discovered apples.
Ben Gutierrez is a geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
BEN GUTIERREZ: Everyone loves apples. I don’t think anything strikes a nerve, especially in the American heart, like the apple.
ROWLADER: Gutierrez is responsible for the entire apple genetic stock in the United States. It’s the largest collection of apples in the world. About 5,000 varieties, some of them dating back to ancient Roman civilizations. The history (and maybe the future) of the apple as we know it is literally in this guy’s hands.
That’s because an enormous list of threats are constantly attacking our food systems, including apples. There’s climate change, pests of all shapes and sizes-
GUTIERREZ: Industrialization, biological threats, bacterial disease, the apple can’t self pollinate, preference change, old boring apples, drought, pesticides, pathogens, you know, human mistakes.
ROWLADER: And the list goes on. About 25 years ago in southern Michigan, hundreds of acres of apple trees had to be destroyed. All because of this bacteria called fire blight. It cost farmers an estimated 42 million dollars.
More recently, a new phenomenon called simply ‘rapid apple decline’ has been decimating apple trees up and down the East Coast, and scientists still don’t know what causes it.
The point is that these threats force scientists and breeders to a) find new treatments, like sprays, pruning, and soil management or b) breed genetic resistance into apples so they can beat these threats on their own.
GUTIERREZ: Breeding is, like, one of the greatest inventions humans have ever been involved in.
ROWLADER: Apple breeding, obviously. The USDA unit that Gutierrez manages sends seedling apples to scientists across the country. These scientists try to stay ahead of the constant and never ending threats to apple trees.
Imagine enormous spreadsheets, greenhouses full of perfectly labeled apple seedlings, and then scientists subjecting the trees to pests, diseases, extreme temperatures, all kinds of hazards. Once the scientists figure out which ones are resistant to the hazards, they try to breed that resistance into other apples.
Okay. Cool. So let’s say they’ve got this super resilient unkillable apple variety. Their next challenge is to make it taste good.
GUTIERREZ: A lot of traits for drought tolerance and adaptation to really extreme environments come from wild, inedible fruit. And now you’ve got to get it into a background that’s delicious. You’re picturing your Honeycrisp apple or your Snap Dragon, something the public is gonna get excited about. But you’re like 40 years away because your source of the disease resistance is so bad.
ROWLADER: That’s why the USDA keeps 5,000 apple varieties in its genetic stockpile.
GUTIERREZ: So that’s kind of like where our mission comes in. Its like, you could question why we’re keeping so much apple variation alive.
ROWLADER: I mean, 5,000 is really an astounding number. (And get this, most of those are cryogenically frozen in a vault in Colorado.)
But if they only saved a handful, it’d be pretty unlikely they’d breed an apple that’s delicious … and also resistant to these threats.
GUTIERREZ: We don’t know what we’ll need for the future. If we knew what we needed for the future, we could cut out 90% of it, but that’s just not how future problems emerge.
ROWLADER: So apple geneticists are always on the hunt for new, undiscovered apples. And that brings us back to Luke Marion on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. It’s possible some of these apples are exactly that – never discovered apple trees.
Luke is cutting last year's growth off the branches. It’s a sunny day. Coldish. There’s snow on the ground. He’s traveling all over the island with a pair of pruners.
MARION: Look at all these apples. Oh my gosh, look at all these apples here. So many apple trees. This is a very happy apple tree. They’re the biggest apples I’ve ever seen. Dude, it’s unbelievable. I thought this was a pear! This is an absolutely crazy apple tree! Here’s a seedline apple. These are huge. This one is old. This is very old. Wow. Am I foaming at the mouth? Oh my gosh, these are crazy. This tree might be the oldest of the trees we’ve seen so far. This one right here, we’re talking at least 170 years old. Absolutely crazy. I’m going to get some cuttings over here real quick.
ROWLADER: Luke puts the cuttings in plastic bags, marks them, and then puts them in a cooler to make sure they stay dormant.
All in all, Luke took cuttings from 71 different apple trees.
Once he plants them and they produce a few leaves, he’ll send a leaf to this project called, “My Fruit Tree.” It’s basically a 23 & Me test for apples and other fruits. And it will tell Luke if he’s found something special.
Cameron Peace is a geneticist and the founder of the project.
PEACE: We’ll be able to find … some trees that come back where it’s like, neither- we can’t figure out either parent. We can barely figure out what the grandparents might be as well. And so those will especially be worth preserving because then they’ll have some genetic compositions that otherwise don’t exist anywhere else.
ROWLADER: Maybe, just maybe, that could be one of the apples on Beaver Island. That’s why Luke is out here saving these apple trees.
But will they be unique enough to preserve in the USDA’s collection? Here’s Gutierrez again.
GUTIERREZ: There’s no telling, right? But until you’ve got it, until you’re holding it in your hands, and you can study it, you’ll never know what its value is.
ROWLADER: Truth be told, these Beaver Island apples, they could be just another Gala or Grannysmith. But they could also be a key to resisting future threats to our food supply. Maybe they’ll solve fire blight outbreaks. Or maybe they’ll contain the solution to growing apples on a warming planet.
Or, and this is an extreme example. But, let’s just say that, for whatever reason, apples have almost been wiped off the planet, and scientists are trying to figure out how to save them. Maybe the solution is these Beaver Island apples. In that sense, Luke wandering around a remote island with a pair of pruners, he isn’t just saving apple trees, he might be saving the apple as we know it.
Okay, that might be a little far-fetched. The apple as we know it isn’t about to disappear. And Luke Marion isn’t out here on a mission to discover new genetic resistances that could rescue apples from the brink of extinction. Luke just really loves apples. And he wants to find a new one – and name it.
MARION: Barney’s Limbertwig, it’s just a good name, it’s got a good jingle to it. Like Luke’s apple, not a strong name. Everyone was born for a certain calling. Me, I’m not gonna be an apple variety, I can tell you that.
ROWLADER: Maybe I can sell Luke on my name for an apple. How bout the Austin Rowlader. The Red Rowlader? The Granny Rowlader? Austin Crisp? Naa. I don’t have a good apple name either.
