My spies tell me the English apple season is set to get underway by the end of the week with the arrival of the first crop of Discovery.

It does not seem so long ago that I named it the White Hope of the industry - the early dessert variety taking over from Beauty of Bath - which would in the consumer’s mind firmly establish that the industry was all set for another year with better-tasting fruit.

Sadly, this has not proved to be the case as the tonnage has shrunk so rapidly that there is little more than a handful this year - some 2,000 tonnes. At this rate it will no doubt pass into the record book in the same way that Norfolk Royal and others briefly sped across the commercial firmament like a meteor and then burned out.

The jury still seems to be out on the future of the much-heralded millennium apple - Meridian, but it could well be headed towards a similar fate.

Yet, the time is fast-approaching when we can expect the annual burst of mass-media interest in our traditional top-fruit fare: when food journalists will rediscover the “old fashioned“ varieties on parade at events, such as the National Apple Show, or the highly successful tastings at RHS Wisley.

Why, the journalists will inevitably ask, can’t these varieties still be grown? The answer, of course, comes down to economics: we are in an era where competitive new varieties come on stream far quicker than anyone ever imagined, and this is responsible for a change in public taste towards sweeter, more mature fruit.

Discovery has in turn succumbed not only to Gala and its numerous highly-coloured clones, but newcomers, such as Pink Lady. And the pattern is not unique to the UK.

In the early 1960s hardly anyone was really aware of Golden Delicious until the French created massive new orchards of Goldens and Granny Smith, thereby creating year-round availability for both alongside the southern hemisphere offer. In this vein, the modern varieties have pushed names, such as White Winter Pearmain and Dunn’s Seedling - once part of a regular South African export programme, off the radar altogether.

Today, despite the volume still available, Goldens are now, in turn, under pressure not just from Gala, Braeburn and Pink Lady but also an increasing number of bi-coloured types, such as Fuji. The next generation has firmly entrenched itself on the supermarket shelves, led by Jazz, Cameo, Tentation, Rubinette, Greenstar and Honeycrunch, and the list of new breeds shows no sign of abating.

At least UK purists can take comfort in the fact that Cox, although no longer dominating the retail shelves, continues to hold its own, and that the public taste for Egremont Russett appears to have been rejuvenated.

And, of course, there will always be Bramley, which has happily been bathed in that magic formula of ongoing success for more than a century.

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