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A fruit grower in Britain has found a golden delicious apple split exactly half green, half red down the middle. Ken Morrish, who lives in the village of Colaton Raleigh, Devon, was surprised to see the fruit. "It is truly amazing. It looks as if a green apple and a red apple have been cut in half and stuck together," The Telegraph quoted him as saying. Moreover, his neighbours have also started queuing up to take pictures of the apple. Morrish revealed that he was plucking a few apples for his sister-in-law when he spotted the fruit hanging from a bough. He said: "I couldn’t believe my eyes. The red and green split through the stem is totally perfect — as if I have painted it. It is a genuine one-off, and none of us has ever seen an apple like this before." Experts are of the opinion that the colour effect may be caused by a random genetic mutation at odds of more than a million to one. Seemingly, the red side should taste sweeter than the green side since it has seen more sunshine during its growth. John Breach, chairman of the British Independent Fruit Growers Association, told Daily Mail: "I have never seen this happen before to a golden delicious. It is extremely rare. It is an extreme mutation. There has been the occasional case of this type reported. If there was a whole branch of apples with the same colouring, then fruit experts would get even more excited." Jim Arbury, fruit
superintendent at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, said: "This is
known as a chimera where one of the first two cells has developed
differently, giving rise to one half of the apple being
different." It is unlikely to be a stable mutation but it is
worth checking next year to see if it recurs. There are instances of
some striped apples and pears where the mutation remains stable,
including one striped pear in the collection at Wisley called Pysanka."—
ANI
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