14 DAY TRIAL // A study published in yesterday's issue of the journal Scientific Reports details how environmental changes that have taken place over the past four decades have affected apples grown in Japan.
The researchers who pieced together this report maintain that, over the course of merely 40 years, two apples varieties, i.e. Fuji and Tsugaru, grown in the country's Nagano and Aomori prefectures, have gotten both sweeter and less crunchy.
More precisely, they claim that the hardness and the acidity of said fruit has significantly decreased. Their sweetness, on the other hand, has upped, Nature tells us.
The scientists explain that, since these changes have taken place gradually, consumers are largely unaware of the fact that the apples they are now eating taste differently than they did 40 years ago.
“But if you could eat an average apple harvested 30 years before and an average apple harvested recently at the same time, you would really taste the difference,” argues fruit-tree specialist Toshihiko Sugiura of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan.
The researchers theorize that apples harvested nowadays are softer and sweeter due to the fact that rising temperatures are causing apple trees to bloom earlier than they used to decades ago.
They believe this affects the quality of the fruit, the same source details.
By the looks of it, apple trees are not the only plants bound to be affected by climate change.
Thus, several other studies have shown that wine grapes, pears and sugar maple trees are also responding to ongoing environmental shifts.
Commenting on these findings, Christopher Field, an ecologist currently working with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, stated as follows:
“Climate changes are impacting the everyday lives of real people. It is not just an abstraction.”
Toshihiko Sugiura and his colleagues urge farmers and specialists to try to breed fruit crops that can handle growing in a warmer climate.
They also say agricultural practices worldwide should be reshaped and made to take into account the environmental shifts brought about by climate change.