Emily Kwong

She is.

But this whole process, hand pollinating, seed extraction, seedling growth, taste testing, it's pretty inefficient.

So Susan is researching a different way to do it through apple DNA testing.

The idea behind this research is that you could look at each apple tree and read its gene markers like a book.

That way, before you even have to taste each apple, you know what it'd be like.

And you could potentially select for specific markers, like whether an apple is red or yellow.

That's clever.

That's really practical.

And I imagine it saves a lot of time and bad apple tasting.

So has this process been implemented?

Like, why isn't she doing this right now?

Well, this is still an emerging area of research.

And Emily, there are 54,000 genes in apples, more than in humans.

Wait, more than in humans?

Apples are complex.

I know.

I know.

That's what I'm learning in this episode.

Hey, I appreciate apples so much more now than I ever did before.

So Susan says that until we have way more genetic markers, we're probably going to have to keep breeding apples the old-fashioned taste test way.