I Made a Mistake - And I Apologize

Yesterday I posted a link to an article in an industry magazine that discussed the role of potassium in bitter pit development in Honeycrisp. The article also mentioned using a specific form of manganese to regulate potassium's effect on calcium.

While we have long known about potassium's (and magnesium's) adverse effect on calcium, the manganese aspect was new to me, and I thought worth sharing.

The mistake I made was in not looking into this further before sharing the article. Had I done so, I may still have shared it, but would have certainly included a disclaimer that it should be considered an advertorial, and the "research" referenced would not stand up to scientific rigors.

I normally delve into things further before sharing them. I didn't this time, and I'm sorry about that. This is a good reminder for me.

The information in the article may very well be legitimate, but it should be taken with just a bit of skepticism because the author is selling a foliar nutrient program and a nutrient analysis service - information that is only disclosed if you click on the author's name or visit his company's website.

When I visited his website, the "research" he references turns out to be a single non-replicated demonstration plot. I know the company who performed the demonstration plot work, and they are a good, reliable, trustworthy company. However, a single non-replicated demonstration plot should never be represented as "research".

And, for what it's worth - there wasn't much bitter pit to begin with, even in the grower standard program. At harvest, the grower standard had 1.16% bitter pit, while the author's foliar program had 0.39% bitter pit. There is no way to know if that is significant, because a split block demo plot is not appropriate for statistical analysis. But with only a 1.16% background level to begin with, I would question whether the difference is economically significant.

After 6 months in storage, the grower standard had 8.96% bitter pit, while the author's foliar program had 3.53% bitter pit. Significant? Who knows.

As I said, the information may very well be valid. I encourage you to go to the author's company website and poke around, then decide for yourself. My purpose here is simply to apologize for sharing something before I had fully vetted it. I'm embarrassed about that because I know better - no excuses.