SLU news

Swedish apples all year round, is that possible?

Published: 18 March 2021
Apple trees in an orchard. Photo.

Today, only a third of the apples sold in Sweden are grown in Sweden. Therefore, Joakim Sjöstrand is researching how the storage time for apples can be increased. This can hopefully enable us to eat Swedish apples all year round in the future.

Every year we consume about 110 million kg of apples in Sweden. Only a third of them are Swedish and there is great potential for increasing the production of Swedish apples. To succeed in this, more research is needed on the period after the harvest. 

–Swedish orchards consists for the most part of unique apple varieties. These varieties need to be stored in special ways to maintain their quality during storage, says Joakim.

Read the whole interview in Swedish here.

Facts:

LivsID is an industry PhD-program at SLU, dedicated to research and education within food-related topics. The program involves nine companies and seven departments at SLU. The industrial PhD students are employed by the company where the project is based and conducted research in food-related applied areas. Through LivsID's activities, they also interact with each other and create a network between academia and companies. 

The program was initiated with support of the government as part of the National food strategy and established in autumn 2018 with initially 10 projects. One more project is associated. The program is running in Alnarp, Umeå and Uppsala.

Read more about the LivsID program here.


Contact

Porträttfoto av en man inomhus. Foto.

Joakim Sjöstrand
Industrial PhD student at Äppelriket and SLU
joakim.sjostrand@slu.se