An Investigation of U.S. Apple Producers’ Trait Prioritization—Evidence from Audience Surveys

Abstract

<jats:p>Systematic studies of the relative importance of apple traits for U.S. apple producers to inform U.S. apple breeding programs have been lacking. To fill this gap, a series of audience surveys with instant feedback at five apple producer meetings across the United States was conducted. The traits included in this study were fruit crispness, juiciness, firmness, flavor, soluble solids concentration, sugar–acid balance, shelf life at retail, freedom from storage disorders, host plant disease resistance, and other fruit and tree traits provided by the producer. Producers rated fruit flavor and crispness as the most important traits for a successful apple cultivar. The relative importance assigned to traits was associated with growing location and producers’ years of experience in the decision-making process of managing apple orchards. This study contributes directly to a larger effort that provides breeding programs with systematic knowledge of trait preferences of supply chain members, including producers, and should result in a more targeted approach to developing and commercializing new apple cultivars.</jats:p>

Breeding Trait Priorities of the Blueberry Industry in the United States and Canada

“…Traits not identified by the respondent as being among the most important or the least important were considered middle choices and were assigned the median of 1-11, which is 6. This method has been used in previous research to elicit the relative level of importance of product attributes (Davis and Gillespie, 2004;Greene and Hensher, 2008;Yue et al, 2013).…”

Perceptions of Precision Agriculture Technologies in the U.S. Fresh Apple Industry

“…It is assumed that a producer's challenge ranking is associated with an underlying utility level of satisfaction or perceived benefits. Producers ranked challenges according to the level of benefits they would receive if a solution to that challenge were provided (Yue et al, 2013(Yue et al, , 2014a(Yue et al, , 2014b(Yue et al, , 2014c. The producers' utility function was represented by the following: where a j is the producer's marginal utility from solutions to challenges j (j = availability/cost of labor for harvest activities; availability/cost of labor for preharvest activities; availability/ cost of intermediate supervisory labor, both harvest and preharvest; pests and diseases; weather; water; postharvest handling; food safety; productivity and profitability of available scion and rootstock cultivars; competing markets; and other challenges); b 12 is the marginal utility from the size of the operation; b 13 ; b 14 , and b 15 are the marginal utility from the state (Washington, Michigan, and New York, respectively) in which the operation is located; b 16 ; b 17; andb 18 are the marginal utility from the most trusted sources (university researchers and extension educators, agricultural service providers, and other growers, respectively) of information for applying precision agriculture technologies; and e ij is the error term, which is assumed to follow a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of s E .…”

A Cost–Benefit Analysis of DNA Informed Apple Breeding

“…The per capita consumption of these fruit crops has slowed in recent years and in some instances has even decreased (Gallardo et al, 2015). To counter this stagnation, breeders seek to develop breakthrough cultivars that exhibit a suite of improved traits to capture the interest of both producers and consumers (Yue et al, 2013). Ideal fruit characteristics for producers and consumers often differ, making the task of breeding for both targeted audiences challenging (Gallardo et al, 2015;Yue et al, 2012. Advances in DNA technologies for crop improvement have increased breeders' ability to adapt their selection processes to meet dynamic market demands.…”