We expect a cut apple to turn brown within a few hours if left exposed to the air.
Some people have noticed that occasionally apples turn brown only very slowly, taking a day or longer.
The change from white flesh to brown is result of polyphenol oxidation.
Common advice for people who want to avoid browning while cooking with apples at home is to coat them with lemon or pineapple juice. Both of these juices provide antioxidants, which slows or stop the oxidation process, and prevent the polyphenol breakdown.
This begs the obvious question, what if the apple contained high levels of antioxidants to begin with?
When plants have nutritional integrity, they will produce much higher concentrations of antioxidants, which might be part of the explanation why some apples do not turn brown quickly.
This half eaten apple (grown with good nutritional balance) was deliberately left to see how quickly the polyphenols would oxidize. This photo was taken 96 hours after it was left on the counter.
Apples browning quickly is a nutritional imbalance problem, not a genetics problem that we should try to solve with genetic engineering.
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