Mutsu is a vigorous tree with large yellow-green fruits with juicy and crispy flesh. Its fruit is excellent for fresh eating and any type of processing you can think of – dried apple slices, apple pie, sauce, baking, and so on. These apples taste excellent straight from the tree, but will also last well in storage. Ripens late in the apple season, around mid-October. Pollination: Mutsu is what’s called a triploid apple – meaning it has three sets of chromosomes, rather than the two sets that most apples have (we as humans also have two sets of chromosomes, and like most apples, we are diploid organisms). This means that in a situation where there are only two apple trees around, Mutsu could get pollinated and make fruit just fine, but Mutsu wouldn’t pollinate the other apple tree, and that apple tree would not have any fruit. So Mutsu works great in a situation where there is a crabapple nearby – the crabapple would pollinate Mutsu just fine. Or Mutsu would work great in a group of three (or more) apple trees – the two others would pollinate each other as well as Mutsu. Disease resistance: Mutsu is one of the apples I sell because it is such a good eating apple, despite being susceptible to fire blight and scab. Both of these can be dealt with – fire blight with pruning, scab with multiple factors (siting, orchard sanitation, spraying if need be). Parentage: Developed in Japan as a cross between Golden Delicious x Indo. It has been marketed as Crispin in North America and Europe. Mutsu was first grown in 1930 and released to the public in 1948. References: News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden. Apple Cultivars and Their Uses. Apple Varieties for Box Elder County. Image 1: Fast Growing Trees. Image 2: Sun Orchard Apples.
