New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 541 



Station, showed but little difference, fruit under both treatments 

 keeping equally well until the end of the commercial storage season. 



Quality of the fruit. — What is quality? The word is rolled under 

 the tongue by both fruit-growers and consumers as meaning much, 

 but like " good cheer " in the fable is " fish to one, flesh to another, 

 and fowl to a third." As the word is here used, quality is, in brief, 

 that combination of flavor, aroma, juiciness and tender flesh which 

 makes fruits agreeable to the palate. Quality has, and is coming 

 more and more to have, commercial value and the effects, therefore, 

 of the two treatments on apples in this respect are most important. 



The tilled fruit in this orchard is much better in quality than 

 that from the sod-mulch plats, a fact affirmed every year by those 

 who have to do with the experiment and attested by all fruit-growers 

 who have eaten the apples with a comparison in mind. Let us 

 take the evidence of Mr. G. Harold Powell, of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, as one of the witnesses. In this report 

 on the keeping qualities of this fruit, noted in the second paragraph 

 before this, he says: 



(March 1st, 1907.) " The texture of the sod fruit was coarse 

 and the flavor was insipid, with a trace of bitterness in it. The 

 tillage apples were brittle and semi-firm in texture, aromatic and 

 good in flavor." 



(End of the commercial storage season, 1908.) " There was a 

 distinct difference in quality in favor of the apples from the culti- 

 vated land, the fruit from the sod trees, though finer in color, having 

 a coarse texture and an insipid, slightly bitter flavor." 



" At the time this report is made, February 8, 1909, there is con- 

 siderable Baldwin spot in the different lots of fruit and the apples 

 from the cultivated trees though of poorer color were finer in quality 

 than the fruit from the sod trees." 



As to the findings at the Geneva Station we cannot do better 

 than to quote a part of the preliminary report on quality in Bulletin 

 No. 314 l from this Station: 



" The difference in quality is due chiefly to a difference in the 

 texture of the flesh. In eating, the tissues of the tilled fruit are 

 turgid and crisp while in the apples from the sod-mulch plat there is 

 a tendency to dryness and mealiness. A determination of the 

 water content, however, does not show much difference in this 



1 N. Y. Sta. Bui. 314: 101, 102. 1909. 



