The declining demand for Cox promises to be reversed thanks to its significantly improved eating quality and shelf life over the past two seasons.

The main reason for this upturn is seen to be the widespread treatment of the stored crop with a product that greatly depresses its production of ethylene which causes ripening, thus softening of the fruit.

Dr Martin Luton, Qualytech’s storage specialist, predicts that growers’ use of SmartFresh “could be the variety’s saviour”. He found that in late January the average pressure of Cox in the stores he monitors was around 7.5kg, “which is unheard of”. The firmness of untreated Cox was 6-6.5kg, which is “pretty marginal” for supermarket requirements.

Marks & Spencer’s senior fruit technologist Emmett Lunny said: “We have a strict harvesting protocol and leave Cox on the trees for longer to get better flavour and [our growers] use SmartFresh to improve its texture.”