The man who put the ‘snap’ in Honeycrisp is stepping aside

After 41 years at the helm of the fruit breeding program at the University of Minnesota, Jim Luby is retiring.

He is one of the people credited with breeding the Honeycrisp, the Zestar! and the SweeTango, among other apple varieties. He began working at the university’s Horticultural Research Center in 1982.

Walking with him on the grounds of the university’s research orchards out in Victoria, makes it clear how different his approach to picking up an apple is from your normal grocery customer browsing the fruit aisle.

He stops at a tree laden with Honeycrisps.

“It’s pretty close to ready,” he said, pulling an apple from a branch. “You can tell how easily it came off the tree. That’s one good sign. The other thing is what we call the under color. Here it’s got the red over color, as we call it but this under color goes from green to yellow. And when it’s just kind of in this greenish yellow phase is usually a really good time to sample it.”

This is the most successful apple variety in the program’s history. And Luby, who understands what it took to breed it, but also what weather conditions are best for it, happily takes a bite.

“It’s getting some great flavor,” he said, examining the flesh of the fruit. “Yep, when we get these cool nights too, it usually starts to bring out the sugar. Gets us some really good flavors.”

This is his life’s work — breeding, growing and tasting fruit. He’s also developed grapes, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, pears and plums.

Luby became interested in this field at a young age. His mother was a guide at the Arboretum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studied biology in high school and in summers worked on his uncle’s dairy farm. And his first job out of school was working breeding oats.

“I decided this is kind of cool — you get to work outside during the nice part of the year,” he said. “It’s an outdoor job. It takes advantage of my interests in biology, genetics. Get to do something in agriculture, get to do something that’s hopefully good for people.”

It’s been good for Minnesota apple growers, for berry growers and even wineries. He has helped develop several grape varieties hearty enough to withstand harsh winters.

“When I started, I think there was one licensed winery in Minnesota, and now I believe there’s about 80 licensed,” he said. “Most of these wineries, they’re gathering spaces in their communities, just like craft breweries are. And so I think we really, by having grapes that could actually grow here, we really enabled that whole industry and similar industries in other states across the northern part of the country. So that’s something we’re also quite proud of.”

After 41 years teaching, researching and breeding plants, Luby retired this summer. Last week, Luby walked through the orchards to the west of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, inspecting trees and vines, apples and grapes.

“This is where we did most of our breeding work,” he said.

The research center has existed since 1908, when the Legislature bought land for the fruit breeding farm just south of Lake Minnetonka. Thousands of apple trees line the landscape, each one with a little label below that helps researchers keep tabs on which breeds and crosses are at work in each tree.

Luby says, depending on the season, his work could consist of tasting hundreds of apples a day. 

“We’ve figured about one in 10,000 seedling trees that you start from seed and eventually get to fruit and get to be a variety,” he said. “And so that means you got to taste 9,999 duds to hopefully find that one.”

So, he says, you can get a little sick of eating apples. But he says he’ll never forget his first bite of the Honeycrisp.

“Back in 1983 I think it was. And also, I remember the first time I tasted SweeTango, too. Some of these, you just know they’re going to be a winner,” he said. “Most of them, it’s a little bit uncertain, but some of them, it’s like, Whoa. That is really good.”

He said he goes through similar taste tests with other fruit depending on the season.

“As we would get into summer every year, I would get excited about tasting strawberries. They’re the first thing. And then after a couple weeks of tasting strawberries, whew, it’s work again,” he said. “But the good thing is, it ends and then you’ve got blueberries coming. And, oh, I love blueberries, but, boy, after a couple weeks of tasting blueberries, you get tired of those, too. Good thing is, shortly after that, you got apples and grapes coming. And so it’s, you know, fortunately, the variety keeps us a little bit balanced.”

When he goes to the grocery store, and he’s not sick of eating them every day, he has his favorite apples.

“Most of the year Honeycrisp is available, so I buy a lot of Honeycrisp,” he said. “Now when SweeTango is available, that’s my favorite apple. That’s usually a little more seasonal, starting about now and going past New Year’s sometime here, that’s the one I really like to eat when I can find it.”

Luby says he’s loved his career. He’s been happy to help farmers get more resilient crops and fruit.

“I’m certainly proud of all of our fruit varieties that have come out, but we do have some great people here too,” he said. “We’re in the business of putting out new fruit varieties, but also putting out new scientists and new professionals in the field.”

Luby said he plans to spend time with his family, travel a bit, and maybe do some consulting. He also plans to visit the orchards at the research center from time to time.

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