The Apple Club Newsletter

Winter 2008

Welcome to our winter newsletter. I would like to wish all our customers and friends a happy Christmas, and a healthy 2009.

Codling moths

Joke:
What is worse than finding a worm in your apple?
Finding half a worm in your half-eaten apple!
This old joke was told in the days when finding a worm in your apple could happen every now and again.
The worms that people were talking about were not really worms, but caterpillars, which are the young of moths and butterflies. The most common caterpillar that you might find in your apples was the one produced by the codling moth.
Adult codling moths overwinter as pupae in the orchard, and in the springtime they emerge and fly around. At this time the males and females must meet, so that they can multiply. After mating, the females find some apples, and lay their eggs on them. Small caterpillars hatch, and these eat into the apple, making a burrow that gets bigger as they grow. During summer some of the caterpillars emerge, and change into adult moths, and go through another cycle of mating and egg laying, and this gives rise to more caterpillars in apples later in the summer or autumn. It is these caterpillars that might be found in your apples when you eat them.
Obviously people do not want to eat apples containing caterpillars, but luckily a really eco-friendly way of controlling them has been found.
In order to have caterpillars, adult moths must mate. And for this to happen, adult male moths must be able to find the females. In nature, male moths are able to detect females by the scent that they give off. These scents, called phermones, can be detected by male moths even if they are a kilometer away from the females.
So once a male picks up the pheromone trail, all he needs to do is follow it until he finds the female.
Now though, scientists are able to manufacture this pheromone or scent in the laboratory.
As a result, plastic “traps” containing the scent have been made, and apple growers can place these in their orchards.
Once these “false females” are put in the orchard, the male moths, instead of finding females, only find the plastic traps, and then mating cannot happen. And if there is no mating, there are no pregnant females, and so no caterpillars can be born.
The best thing about these traps is that they do not require the use of any pesticides in the orchards, and that the codling moth scent does not affect any other butterflies or moths, so other species are not harmed.
For an apple grower like me, there is no greater satisfaction than the clever application of science.

Apple thinning

Back in summer 2006 I wrote about June drop; that is apples that the tree naturally drops off in June or July. These aren’t the only apples that you might see under our trees in summertime though. With some varieties we deliberately knock off extra apples as well.
Trees of some varieties of apples like Elstar and Golden Delicious, as well as many plums, tend to produce too many fruits. If left to their own devices, you would end up with a crop far too many fruits, and each one would be too small. As well as this, the stress of carrying so many fruits can cause the tree to shut down for a year, which would mean that the following year you will see few or no fruits at all. This kind of a cycle can then become established, where every second year there are either too many fruits, or none at all.
On our farm, where we want to have a crop each year, we try to stop trees from giving too many apples in their “on” year. To do this we thin.
What this means is that in June, when the apples are still small, we walk along the trees, and knock off a proportion of the fruit using our fingers to prise them away from the buds. This can be a slow process, as sometimes a tree which should only have 80 or 100 fruits might have 400 in June. We then need to thin that tree by taking 300 off, and leaving 100 on. It can take a few minutes per tree, and we could have hundreds or even thousands of trees to thin.
When we are thinning, we try to leave the remaining fruits evenly spaced along the branches. At least 10 cm (4 inches) between each fruit would be good. We also try to remove the smallest fruits, as they are usually the weaker ones, and take off any with marks or scars, so that the best are left.
If we did not thin, we could find that branches break in the autumn, simply due to the weight of the fruits, and we would also find that fruits would not taste so well, because the trees resources are spread between too many fruits.
The fruits that we thin off are left to rot into the ground, and they do provide some nutrients for the trees, so not all is lost.
However, thinning is quite a bit of work, and your fingers can get sore after a few days. Luckily there are some varieties like Karmijn, Jonagored and Bramley that do not need thinning, so at least not every tree needs to be done. And because it is usually nice weather in June and July at thinning time, it is a great excuse to get out in the sunshine. Here’s hoping that there will be fruit to thin in 2009, and that the weather will be good for it too!

The Cahir Climatologist

I was surprised and delighted to see an old school-friend of mine on Prime Time about two weeks ago. Kieran Hickey, who now lectures in University College Galway, was featured on Prime Time, being interviewed by Miriam O’Callaghan about the prospects of global warming. He was debating the issue with a film-maker who was critical of the idea, who argued that because scientists have made errors in the past, their predictions are also now unreliable.
Kieran did a great job in arguing his case, and he certainly did expose how far out of his depth the film-maker was. Personally speaking, I am very suspicious of people who down-play the prospects of global warming, as most who do have a vested interest in allowing the current situation to continue, whereas the scientists (whose opinion is almost universal now), have nothing to gain by telling us of the impending problems caused by greenhouse gases.
For those who don’t know Kieran, he originally hails from Church Street, Cahir, in what you may remember as Hickey’s drapery, beside Sampson’s Newsagent.

The cost of everything.

There is an old saying that speaks about knowing the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. To say that someone knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing was a sort of criticism, perhaps implying that the person in question was mean or unappreciative. In the past few years, it appeared to me that neither the cost nor the value of many things was appreciated. And in my opinion, this is even worse than knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
It’s funny, but many things of great value do not have a monetary cost. If you are healthy, then that is of great value; so great that it is not thought possible to put a valuation on your health. If you are happy, is that not of great value? And as we are often told, money can’t buy happiness. Also family, and friendship, good neighbours; the list goes on.
Should we not appreciate having a job or occupation; something to pass the day that may even give satisfaction and fulfilment. And if it is paid occupation, isn’t that even better?
Right now there is a lot of bad economic news around, and it can get people down. People are quickly coming to know the cost of many things that did not occupy their minds before now. The cost of a litre of milk, or a bag of potatoes. But remember, these have a value much greater than their cost. Milk and potatoes sustained the Irish population in pre-famine days, when 8 million people lived in Ireland. These foods, along with the many others we eat sustain and nourish us, and if we choose the right foods, keep us healthy.
It’s not alone the value of the nourishment of the foods we need to think of though. When you choose Irish vegetables, or fruit, or any Irish food, you are keeping jobs in Ireland, and money in the country. You are being a good neighbour to a nearby farmer. You are giving a job to someone in a shop, a job to someone in the food processing chain. Not only are you giving a job however, you are giving them the chance at have a productive and satisfying day. You are being a good neighbour, and you are helping to ensure that there will still be a neighbour in the house down the road by this time next year.
So don’t let the bad news drag you down. Remember that your choices make a difference to people around you, but in much more important ways than you might initially think. If you have some money to spend, then spend it locally; it’s the neighbourly thing to do.

Apples may stop ulcers from aspirin

APPLES could hold the secret to protecting the stomach against damage from aspirin. Research shows the fruit contains chemicals which seem to reduce the risk of the painkiller causing ulcers and bleeding. The findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition, are so far confined to experiments on animals. Aspirin is often described as a wonder drug – but there have long been concerns about the risk of potentially fatal gastric bleeding among patients regularly taking large doses.
Scientists at the University of Naples fed apple extract to animals before they were given a dose of aspirin.
The results showed a 50 per cent drop in lesions—the early stages of a stomach ulcer—after animals were fed the extract.

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel was born in 1822 in what is today the northeastern part of the Czech Republic. At 21 years of age he entered an Augustinian monastery in Brno, the second largest city in Czech. From there he went on to study in Vienna (Austria) and then returned to teach in Brno. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel experimented with pea plants, looking at inheritance of traits. In this period he took notes on 29,000 pea plants that he cultivated in the monastery’s garden.
The results of his study showed that when large numbers of offspring were analysed for particular traits, one in four had dominant genes, one in four had recessive genes, and two in four had mixed dominant/recessive genes.
When Mendel took a purebred white flowering pea, and crossed it with a purebred purple flowering pea, all the resulting (second generation) pea plants had purple flowers. Mendel wondered what had happened to the “factor” that caused white pea flowers. He found his answer when he crossed his second generation peas, as one in four of their offspring was white flowering, even though all the second generation parents were purple-flowered. He realized that purple flowers were dominant to white flowers, much like we now know a black coat of hair is dominant in Labrador dogs. He also realized that purple flowered peas could be hiding a gene that codes for white flower colour behind the dominant purple-coding gene.
Mendel went on to state that each individual has two factors for each trait, one from each parent. The two factors may or may not contain the same information. If the two factors (one coming from each parent) are identical the individual is called homozygous for the trait. If the two factors (again one from each parent) have different information, the individual is called heterozygous.
Once this information was known, it became possible to predict the proportion of offspring that would show a particular trait.
Mendel published his findings in 1866, but they were completely ignored. An eminent botany professor of the time stated that he was unimpressed, and Mendel’s bishop was unhappy that monastery funds had been used to construct a greenhouse to facilitate his work. The bishop of Prague suggested that Mendel should cease his work, and in 1868 Mendel assumed the position of Abbot and confined himself mainly to administrative duties. Mendel died in 1884 and after his death, the new abbot burned all the papers in Mendel's collection.
In 1900, Mendel’s work was rediscovered by way of the 1866 publication. Mendel's experiments were copied and his results were tested. Genetic linkages were quickly worked out. Biologists flocked to the theory because of its logic and simplicity. His 1866 publication is now considered a masterpiece, thanks to his careful attention to procedure and detail. As a result, Mendel's work had a huge impact on the world of genetics, and today the principles he unearthed are known as Mendel's Laws of Heredity.

Here is a little genetics test that you can do in your family:
Are your earlobes free-hanging or attached to your head?
Some people have earlobes than hang, and some people don’t. (See sketch).
Free hanging earlobes are dominant and attached earlobes are recessive.
This means that if you have attached earlobes, you inherited recessive genes from both your parents.
This could happen in three ways:
1. Both your parents have attached earlobes. (They both carry only recessive genes). You and all your brothers and sisters will have attached earlobes.
2. One parent has attached earlobes and one has free-hanging earlobes. (The parent with attached earlobes carries only recessive genes, and the parent with free-hanging earlobes carries one dominant and one recessive gene). There is a 50/50 chance that you and your brothers and sisters will have either attached earlobes or free-hanging earlobes.
3. Both parents have free-hanging earlobes. If this is the case, both your parents must be carrying a dominant and recessive gene for this trait, and there is only a 25% chance that you would end up with attached earlobes. There is a 75% chance that your brothers and sisters have free-hanging earlobes.
On the other hand, if you have free hanging earlobes, like in the sketch below, you could have inherited the dominant gene from one of your parents, or from both. If you can find out whether your parents, spouse and children’s earlobes are attached or free-hanging, you should be able to figure out your genetics for this trait. A little puzzle for over the Christmas:


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