U apple breeder is Minnesota's 'Captain crunch'

On a crisp late-October afternoon, David Bedford plucks an apple from a young tree, chomps into the fruit and chews thoughtfully.

"Perfectly good. Not excellent. Not a wow." He tosses the apple to the ground, and renders his verdict with spray paint, a stripe of orange down the trunk that tells the orchard crew to take it down. "You're going to the firewood farm," he tells the tree, with a wry grin that creases the smile lines framing his planed cheekbones and salt-and-pepper goatee.

Bedford, mild-mannered and even-tempered, is ruthless in his quest to produce Minnesota's next great apple.

"I used to be more benevolent," he said.

He'd give a merely OK tree a few more years to "get its act together." But after decades as an apple breeder, Bedford knows what he's looking for. And this apple isn't it. If the tree stays, "I'd have to taste that same mediocre apple again next year," he said. So the tree has to go, to make room for other, more promising varieties at the University of Minnesota's Horticultural Research Center in Excelsior.

As research scientist for the U's apple-breeding program, Bedford tastes a lot of apples. About 500 to 600 a day, every day, during peak apple season, until his gums hurt.

"It's hard on the teeth," he admitted. Even though he spits out the pulp, the acidic juice inflames his mouth to the point that he has to use special toothpaste and fluoride rinses to "cool things down."

"There are only so many bites you can tolerate in a day," he said. "I can do about six hours, then I get sick of them and have to stop. The worst thing is to keep going, like using a tool that's out of calibration."

Bedford's finely honed palate for apples has shaped the choices available at orchards and in grocery stores — in Minnesota, across the country and even across the globe.

"He's one of the elite breeders for apples in the world," said grower John Jacobson, whose Pine Tree Apple Orchard in White Bear Lake and Preston, Minn., is a test site. "One of his strengths is his ability to take an apple, bite it and project what's going to be popular — that texture, that crunch, that juiciness. He's done a fabulous job being able to put all those characteristics together."

Bedford doesn't do the job alone, he's quick to point out, but as part of a team. He and Jim Luby, the horticultural science professor who directs the U's fruit-breeding program, have been collaborating on apple selection for three decades. During their partnership, the program has released six new varieties: Honeycrisp; Zestar!; SnowSweet; Minneiska (better known by its brand name, SweeTango); Frostbite and most recently MN55, which has yet to be christened and won't be available commercially for another several years.

But Bedford is the guy who does the day-to-day cultivating, grafting and cloning and who personally tastes all those mediocre apples in hopes of finding "the next Honeycrisp, or something even better."

"He's our front line, making the decisions about what gets thrown out," said Luby. "And 99 percent gets thrown out."

Of the surviving 1 percent, Honeycrisp is the program's rock star. Introduced in 1991, it's now the sixth largest apple in production in the United States, according to Mark Seetin, director of regulatory and industry affairs for the U.S. Apple Association. Honeycrisp's rapid rise is "extraordinary," Seetin said. "It has exploded in the last five years. It's a doggone good apple."

The U's apple operation, one of the nation's three major breeding programs, is more than a century old, with 27 apple introductions to its credit, but Honeycrisp put it on the map, in Jacobson's opinion. "When they released Honeycrisp, they hit it out of the park."

Now Honeycrisp and its follow-up releases are major players in the state's apple industry, said Charlie Johnson, president of the Minnesota Apple Growers Association and owner of Whistling Well Farm, near Afton. "If it wasn't for the U's breeding program, we wouldn't be in business. The apples they've developed are really popular with consumers." Honeycrisp, for example, "has the taste it's supposed to have when it's grown here. Consumers have figured that out and do try to buy from Minnesota growers."

Bedford didn't breed the first Honeycrisp tree; that was done before he came to the U (apple-breeding is a decades-long process). But he and Luby rescued the apple from oblivion.

"Here's a little-known secret of Honeycrisp: It got thrown away by the original breeder — it had some winter injury," Bedford said. That first tree was destroyed, but four clones survived. His first taste of the "explosively crisp" fruit left an indelible memory. "I've tasted millions of apples, and I can still remember my first Honeycrisp and my first SweeTango."

Other apples evoke less fond memories. Bedford isn't shy about trash-talking Red Delicious, the "pathetic" variety he grew up eating in North Carolina.

The big red apples, tough of skin and mealy in texture, dominated the marketplace during his childhood and convinced him he didn't care for apples. He remembers opening his metal lunchbox to "the overpowering smell of an overripe Red Delicious." He couldn't trade it away. "It was the lowest thing on the scale. And the lowest thing on Halloween was getting an apple, a Red Delicious."

But as a student at Wheaton College in Illinois, where he went to study biology — and experience snow — Bedford had an apple epiphany. A friend brought a bushel of Michigan apples and invited Bedford to try one. "It was crisp. That's what I never had. Crisp and juicy. I ate half a bushel myself."

After college, Bedford worked at a nursery for a few years and found plants so fascinating that he decided to go back to school to study horticulture, earning his master's degree from Colorado State. A propagation job opened up at the U, and Bedford took it, intending to stay only a few years. But soon he got the opportunity to do some breeding, and he was hooked. "My universe just exploded — there was so much potential. I realized apples could be so much more."

Sampling apples with Bedford is a bit like tasting wine with a sommelier. As he shares each slice, he points out apples that taste like cloves or cherry Lifesavers, fruit with floral notes or earthy, herbal undertones.

He looks for 20 characteristics when sizing up apples, but some traits carry more weight than others. "Our priority is to make an apple that's a memorable eating experience," he said. Appearance is secondary. "Texture and flavor are the two most important things."

He learned that lesson through his own experiences as a grower and seller. He and his wife, Shilon, own a small orchard in Carver County. The apples grown there are now sold wholesale, but for years, Bedford sold them himself at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market.

"There's no better school in the world," he said. "Minnesotans are so polite. They rarely say, 'That's a terrible apple.' But it became clear that what registers with people is texture and flavor. That's seared into my brain."

To achieve that perfectly textured, flavorful apple, Bedford pairs different parent trees in pursuit of superior offspring. It's always a long shot, but DNA testing has taken breeding a big step forward. "When I choose a parent, I now know what its genetic makeup is," he said.

MN55, the latest release, is the child of Honeycrisp and an Arkansas variety, resulting in an apple that tastes much like Honeycrisp but is more heat-tolerant and ripens earlier.

Jacobson was convinced that MN55 was a winner when he spotted a red, ripe apple in his orchard in mid-August. "Holy cow! I ate it, and thought, 'This is really something.' "

He shared his enthusiasm with Bedford — who was his usual, laid-back self. "He just told me, 'We've gotta do a little more testing on it.' "

Bedford also was the voice of calm reassurance when nervous growers peppered him with questions during last year's polar vortex, Jacobson said. "We hadn't had a winter that cold since [Honeycrisp's introduction], and people were asking, 'Do you think these are going to make it?' David said, 'Everything should be OK, because of the genetics.' He was right. He doesn't get rattled. He knows his stuff."

Bedford, who turns 63 Wednesday, has no desire to retire anytime soon. "The intrigue, that last cross you made. It keeps you coming back," he said. "We are nowhere near reaching the limit of how far we can go."

So he hopes to keep breeding apples — "as long as I'm physically able," he said. Then he smiles. "If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I'll live forever."

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784