DISEASES OF APPLES ON THE MARKET. 
23 
a condition may have been due to the rather high percentage of 
small sizes in the 1920 crop, but in the writer's opinion can fairly be 
taken as proof that dealers were suspicious enough of the large sizes 
to move them early. 
Weakness in large apples appears to be a fact, but the causes of it 
are rather obscure. Large apples are usually more mature than small 
ones and for that reason are more easily damaged by rough handling, 
which results in skin breaks and the entrance of decay fungi. The 
very weight of such apples may also cause them to suffer more than 
small ones from rough handling. There is ample evidence that they 
are usually coarser in texture, and it may be that texture in apples 
is an important factor in determining their susceptibility to disease. 
In the matter of scald, however, overmaturity can scarcely be the 
main reason why large apples are more seriously affected, since the 
work of Brooks, Cooley, and Fisher 3 and other investigators has shown 
that the greatest susceptibility to the disease is found in immature fruit. 
Such fruit is always poorly colored and always more susceptible to 
scald. In fact, Table 23 shows scald to have been worse in the 
Fancy than in the Extra Fancy grade; that is, in the grade which 
PER CENT DISEASED 
20 
WATER-CORE 
SCALD 
INTERNAL 
BREAKDOWN 
BLUE MOLD ROT 
AND DECAY , . V7Z 
Fig. 8.— Percentages of water-core, scald, internal breakdown, and blue-mold rot and decay in large and 
small sizes of apples, for the four crop years, 1917 to 1920, inclusive. 
by definition is poorly colored. It is true that lack of color is not 
the only reason for barring apples from the Extra Fancy grade, but 
in spite of that fact, the percentage of color shown is one of the chief 
differences between the two grades. 
The relation between scald and grade should not, however, be 
allowed to obscure the fact that there is often a very marked relation 
between scald and size. 
FREEZING INJURY. 
The number of cars showing freezing injury in 1919 and 1920, dis- 
tributed by crop and month, is given in Table 24. Data available 
on the crops of 1917 and 1918 were incomplete and are not included. 
The effect of the severe winter of 1919-20 is shown by the fact that 
cars showing freezing injury were nearly five times as numerous 
during that winter as during the much milder winter of 1920-21. 
3 Charles Brooks, J. S. Cooley, and D. F. Fisher. Apple scald. In Jour. Agr. Research, v. 1&, p. 195- 
217. 1919. 
