LudaCrisp® Apples

Sweet, tropical and startlingly aromatic — it is the most distinctive flavour of any apple we grow, and nobody who tastes one forgets it. MAIA’s own description is “sweet, tropical and fruity”.

Careful tasters get more detail: a first impression of sweet and spicy with clove and melon, the spice fading as the sweetness comes forward, and a nose of fresh sweet cider. Some people find distinct pineapple. The sweetness reads more like syrup than like plain sugar.

A great many people say so, and it is not marketing invention — MAIA’s own president has said the apple has “a flavor akin to Juicy Fruit gum,” and that Juicy Fruit was very nearly its name.

We would put it this way: there is a tropical, slightly artificial-seeming fruitiness that genuinely does recall the gum. Not everyone tastes it, and at least one careful reviewer does not. Try one before you commit to a case.

Sweet, clearly, but with enough acid to keep it from cloying — growers describe “a nice sweet-tart balance” rather than a sugar bomb.

If you like Honeycrisp and EverCrisp you will be comfortable here. If you want real sharpness, go to GoldRush or RubyFrost.

Very. It is described as extremely crisp, and independent tasting notes call the crunch “both substantial and light, not a jawbreaker” — which is a useful distinction. It breaks cleanly rather than requiring force.

Ludacrisp is crisp in the Honeycrisp manner, not the granite manner.

Conspicuously. “Good ’n’ juicy” is how MAIA puts it, and tasting notes record “a lot of juice”. It is one of the juicier apples in a category already selected for juiciness.

Practical consequence: it is a poor desk apple and a superb one to eat over a sink.

Bicolour — orange-red streaking over a pale yellow ground, with tan lenticel dots scattered across the skin. The red is striped rather than a solid wash, so no two look quite alike.

It is a handsome, old-fashioned-looking apple, which is slightly at odds with a name borrowed from a rapper.

Large. The variety is consistently described as large-fruited, and ours generally run about 195 to 310 grams — so one and a half to two to the pound.

Large fruit is part of why growers plant it: size sells, and it is easier to pick a bushel of big apples than a bushel of small ones.

Light yellow rather than white, in a medium-coarse grain. The coarseness is what gives the crunch its particular character — a fine-grained apple crunches differently.

Against the orange-red streaked skin it cuts very well for a platter or a board.

Yes, and the aroma is a large part of the experience. Cut one and it smells of fresh sweet cider; whole, the tropical note comes through the skin.

Much of what people identify as the “Juicy Fruit” character is aroma rather than taste, which is why it is so much stronger in a freshly cut apple than in a stored one.

Background colour is the test: the pale ground under the orange-red streaks should have moved from green to a warm yellow. It is a late apple — harvested three to four weeks after Golden Delicious — so patience is usually the right approach.

It should also be heavy for its size and should smell of something when you hold it near your face. A Ludacrisp with no aroma was picked early.

At a normal rate for an apple. It is not one of the slow-browning varieties.

For slices that hold their colour on a platter, use AutumnCrisp, SnowSweet or RubyFrost. For Ludacrisp, a squeeze of lemon does the job.

Yes, and in a particular way: the tropical aroma is at its loudest in the first weeks and mellows over months, while the sweetness holds. A Ludacrisp in February is still a very good apple; it is a slightly quieter one.

If the Juicy Fruit character is what you are buying it for, eat them early in the season.

No. It is thin and tender for an apple of this size, which is one of the quiet reasons the variety eats so well — a big apple with a thick skin is much less pleasant.

Leave it on. It carries the colour and a good share of the aroma.

Some do, and it is worth saying. The flavour is unusually assertive and unusually artificial-seeming for an apple, and a palate that wants a classic apple taste can find it strange.

At least one careful reviewer describes the sweetness as “more corn syrup than sugar” and prefers other apples. This is a variety with fans and detractors and very few people in between.

Extremely popular with them, for the obvious reason: it is sweet, juicy and tastes faintly of sweets. It is also large, which is worth considering for a small lunchbox — half an apple may be the sensible serving.

For a whole-apple lunchbox fruit, Lady apples at six to ten to the pound are better sized.

Nobody has published an aroma-compound analysis for this variety, so we can only tell you that several independent tasters report pineapple and tropical fruit, and that it is a real and repeatable impression rather than suggestion.

Esters are what carry that kind of aroma in fruit generally. Which ones are doing it here is not something we can tell you honestly.

No, and the contrast is interesting because they come from the same breeding programme. EverCrisp is dense, balanced and classically appley — a Fuji-and-Honeycrisp sort of flavour. Ludacrisp is tropical, perfumed and unmistakable.

They ripen about a week apart and are siblings only in the organisational sense. MAIA deliberately breeds for range rather than for one house style.

Yes, genuinely and deliberately. The name was proposed by JP Pacello of Pacello Orchard in upstate New York, a MAIA member, and his reasoning was straightforward marketing: “We grew up in the era of DMX, Ja Rule, Lil Wayne, Lil Jon, those are the popular rappers, especially Ludacris, and so I was just trying to think of a name that would attract my age group.”

It is one of the very few apple varieties named after a living musician.

They were, in MAIA president Bill Dodd’s description, “completely split” — the room divided between people who loved it and people who hated it.

That is a remarkably candid thing for an organisation to say about its own product, and it is one of the reasons we like MAIA. The name went ahead anyway.

Juicy Fruit. The flavour resemblance to the chewing gum was strong enough that it was seriously considered as the variety name before Ludacrisp won.

Given that Juicy Fruit is a Wrigley trademark, the eventual choice was probably the safer one as well as the more memorable.

Not that we can find. When TODAY.com reported the story, representatives for the rapper had not responded to a request for comment.

So the apple is named after him and, as far as the public record goes, he has never commented on it.

It is the cultivar designation: MAIA-L, where MAIA is the Midwest Apple Improvement Association and the letter identifies the selection. Ludacrisp® is the trademarked brand name.

Same structure as EverCrisp, which is cultivar MAIA1. The cultivar name goes on the patent; the brand name goes on the bag.

Yes. Ludacrisp® is a registered trade name, and only fruit meeting MAIA’s quality standards may be sold under it. The underlying cultivar is MAIA-L, covered by US Plant Patent 30,472.

This is now the standard arrangement for new apples — the same as SnapDragon, RubyFrost and WineCrisp.

Because a grower-run co-operative names its own apples, and growers have a sense of humour that a corporate marketing department would not. The MAIA list includes Ludacrisp, Red Zeppelin, Scruffy, Sweet Zinger, Rosalee, Summerset, Amarilla Soul and Sweet Maia.

Compare that with the university and corporate releases — Cosmic Crisp, SnapDragon, RubyFrost, Pink Lady. MAIA names sound like a band poster, and that is entirely deliberate.

One word: Ludacrisp®. You will see it written various ways in shops and on signs, but the trademark is a single word.

The cultivar underneath is MAIA-L regardless of how the sign is spelled.

No. Cosmic Crisp is WA 38, bred at Washington State University from Honeycrisp and Enterprise and launched commercially in 2019.

Ludacrisp is MAIA-L, a Midwest grower co-operative selection from an open-pollinated Sweet 16, patented as USPP 30,472. Different breeder, different state, different parentage, different apple.

Almost certainly, at one remove. Its recorded parent is Sweet 16, and open-pollinated means the pollen parent is unknown — but the MAIA orchards where these crosses were made are full of Honeycrisp, and MAIA’s whole programme grew out of Honeycrisp-derived breeding.

We will not state a Honeycrisp parentage as fact, because the patent records the cross as open-pollinated and nobody has published a DNA confirmation we can cite.

No — about as far from one as an apple can be. The cross was made around 1998 to 2000, the patent issued in 2019, trees were offered to orchards in 2021 and it reached supermarket shelves from 2024.

It is one of the newest apples you can buy.

Trees were offered to orchards in 2021, and the fruit began appearing in Sprouts Farmers Markets from 2024. Before that it was available only from MAIA member orchards and farm stands.

If you tasted one before 2024, you almost certainly bought it directly from a grower.

Because apples are slow and a grower co-operative is careful. From a cross made around 1998–2000: years for seedlings to fruit, years of evaluation, propagation, multi-site trials, a patent application filed in 2017, a patent granted in 2019, trees to orchards in 2021, and then three or four years before those trees bore a sellable crop.

Twenty-five years is normal. It only looks slow because the marketing arrives all at once at the end.

Very few, and MAIA has two of them: Ludacrisp and Red Zeppelin. Most apple names come from places, people in horticulture, or descriptive compounds.

It is a sign of how the business has changed. An apple is now a consumer brand that has to compete for attention in a shop, and a memorable name does real work.

A grower-run apple breeding co-operative, founded and run by the people who actually grow apples rather than by a university or a corporation. It has around 1,200 members and is led by president and CEO Bill Dodd.

Members make crosses, grow out seedlings on their own farms, and share the results. It is one of the more unusual structures in modern fruit breeding.

Because it changes what gets selected for. A programme funded by large packers optimises for what ships and stores at scale. A programme run by 1,200 mostly direct-market growers optimises for what a customer at a farm stand will pay for and come back for.

That is why MAIA apples tend to be big, sweet, aromatic, disease-tolerant and eccentrically named. They are bred for the person standing in front of the grower.

Nine or so to date: MAIA1 and MAIA-Mitchell (both sold as EverCrisp), MAIA-L (Ludacrisp), MAIA-SM (Sweet Maia), MAIA11 (Rosalee), MAIA12 (Summerset), MAIA-Z (Sweet Zinger), MAIA-T (Scruffy), MAIA-RZ (Red Zeppelin) and MAIA-AM (Amarilla Soul).

We grow two of them: EverCrisp and Ludacrisp.

Organisationally, yes; genetically, no. EverCrisp is MAIA1, a Fuji × Honeycrisp cross. Ludacrisp is MAIA-L, from an open-pollinated Sweet 16.

They are stablemates rather than siblings, and they taste nothing alike — which is the point of a programme that breeds for range.

In Pataskala, Ohio, in a MAIA member’s planting. That is how the co-operative works: seedlings are grown out on member farms, and the promising ones get noticed by the person walking the rows.

It is a genuinely different model from a research station, and it puts selection in the hands of people who sell fruit for a living.

MAIA members. The variety is patented and restricted — nurseries supply it to members of the association rather than to the general trade, and fruit meeting quality standards may then be sold under the Ludacrisp® brand.

That is a real restriction, not a formality. A home gardener cannot simply order one from any nursery.

An association — a membership organisation of growers, with a president and CEO and a members’ portal, which licenses its cultivars and trademarks and returns the proceeds to the programme.

In practice it functions like a breeding co-operative: members contribute, members benefit, and members vote on things like whether to call an apple Ludacrisp.

Largely through member participation — crosses made and seedlings grown out across many farms rather than in one research block. That spreads the cost, spreads the climate and soil variation, and puts far more eyes on the seedlings.

The trade-off is record-keeping. Open-pollinated crosses like the one that produced Ludacrisp leave the pollen parent unknown, which a tightly controlled programme would not.

Not especially. The association’s focus has been on apples people want to eat fresh — flavour, crunch and something distinctive.

Ludacrisp is a good example: nobody would mistake it for anything else.

Flavour first, and apples that stand out. The Midwest Apple Improvement Association is a growers’ co-operative, so the people choosing the seedlings are the people who have to sell the fruit.

That shows in what they have released — EverCrisp for crunch and keeping, Ludacrisp for sheer personality.

It started in the Midwest and remains centred there, but membership is wider — the grower who named Ludacrisp farms in upstate New York.

The varieties are planted well beyond the Midwest now, including here.

Ownership and incentive. Cornell, Minnesota and Washington State run programmes funded by public money and licensing revenue, with professional breeders and decades-long evaluation cycles.

MAIA is the growers themselves, selecting on their own farms with their own customers as the test. Both models work; they select for different things, and you can taste the difference between a RubyFrost and a Ludacrisp.

No — it licenses cultivars and trademarks to its member growers, who sell the fruit. We are one of the farms selling it.

If you want Ludacrisp you buy it from a grower, which is a large part of why it took until 2024 to appear in any supermarket chain.

Because the model is direct-market first. A variety restricted to member growers spreads at the speed those growers plant and bear, not at the speed a large packer can plant a thousand acres.

EverCrisp took roughly the same path and is now widely available. Ludacrisp is a few years behind it on the same curve.

MAIA cultivars are planted in the United States and Canada. We have seen no evidence of commercial plantings further afield, and given the licensing restrictions we would not expect much.

This is still a young variety with a small footprint.

We do not know, and neither does anyone publishing figures. Trees went to orchards in 2021 and first fruit reached chain retail in 2024, so the national planting is still small and growing fast.

Practically: it is easy to find at farm stands in MAIA country, and hit-and-miss everywhere else.

One known, one not. The seed parent is Sweet 16, and the cross was open-pollinated — meaning the flower was left to whatever pollen the bees brought, so the pollen parent is unrecorded.

MAIA states it plainly: Ludacrisp was “developed from an open-pollinated Sweet 16”. Anyone who tells you the second parent is unaware that nobody knows it.

A University of Minnesota variety released in 1978, from the same programme that later produced Honeycrisp and SnowSweet. It is famous for one thing above all: an unusual flavour, variously described as anise, cherry candy, vanilla or bourbon.

That matters enormously here. Ludacrisp’s tropical, sweet-shop character is not a marketing accident — it comes down from a parent already known for tasting of something other than apple.

It is the most plausible explanation, and we would put it no more strongly than that. Sweet 16 is the best-known example of an apple with a distinctly confectionery flavour, and its seedling turning out tropical and gum-like is exactly what you would expect.

Nobody has published the aroma chemistry for either variety, so this is reasoning from parentage rather than a demonstrated mechanism.

That the breeder let the blossom be pollinated naturally instead of applying pollen from a chosen variety by hand. You know the mother because you know which tree the fruit came from; the father is whatever the bees carried in.

It is cheaper and more productive of seed than controlled crossing, and it is common in grower-led programmes. The cost is that half the pedigree is permanently unrecorded.

In principle yes — apple parentage has been settled by SSR and SNP marker work many times, including some famous corrections. Honeycrisp’s own recorded parentage was overturned that way.

As far as we can find, nobody has published such a study for MAIA-L. Until somebody does, “open-pollinated Sweet 16” is the whole of the honest answer.

Not by the record. Sweet 16 is the recorded parent, not Honeycrisp. Honeycrisp could well be the unknown pollen parent given what grows in MAIA orchards, but that is speculation and we are not going to print it as fact.

There is a genuine family connection, though: Sweet 16 and Honeycrisp both come from the University of Minnesota programme, and Honeycrisp has Keepsake in its background, which shares ancestry with Sweet 16.

US Plant Patent 30,472, for the apple tree named ‘MAIA-L’. The application was filed by the Midwest Apple Improvement Association on 31 July 2017 and the patent issued in 2019.

A plant patent runs 20 years from filing, so this one has protection into the late 2030s.

Not legally while the patent stands. A plant patent gives the holder exclusive rights to asexual propagation — grafting, budding, cuttings — for twenty years from filing.

Planting a licensed tree you bought is entirely fine. Taking scion wood from it and grafting more is not.

Around 1998 to 2000. MAIA’s president described the programme behind it as starting some twenty-five to twenty-seven years before late 2025.

So the seed that became Ludacrisp was planted while Ludacris was releasing his first albums, which is a pleasing coincidence rather than a plan.

No. It is a seedling — an apple grew from a seed of a Sweet 16 fruit, was noticed, and was propagated by grafting. That is the oldest method there is.

Open pollination is in fact the least manipulated way to breed an apple: the breeder did not even choose the father.

A seedling — a genuinely new individual grown from seed. A sport is a mutated branch on an existing tree, which is how most of the red Delicious strains and many Gala strains arose.

Seedlings give you new flavour; sports give you a different-coloured version of a flavour you already had.

MAIA breeds for frost tolerance across its programme and lists it as a goal for the whole range. That is a Midwestern preoccupation — a late spring frost after bloom can take an entire crop — and it is one of the things a grower-run programme weights more heavily than a Washington or New York one would.

We have seen no variety-specific frost-tolerance data for MAIA-L in particular, so treat that as a programme-level claim rather than a measured one.

It is described as cropping consistently and annually, which is worth a great deal. Many good apples, Honeycrisp and Macoun among them, swing hard between a heavy year and a bare one.

Annual bearing is the difference between an orchard business and a gamble, and it is exactly the kind of trait growers select for when growers are doing the selecting.

Organic is a certification of how an orchard is run rather than a property of the variety, so no apple is automatically organic.

Ask us how ours are grown and we will tell you straight.

Yes — the tree structure is described as quite favourable to high-density plantings, which is how essentially all new commercial orchards are established now: closely spaced trees on dwarfing rootstock trained to a trellis.

A variety that will not train into that system is commercially dead however good it tastes, so this matters more than it sounds.

Almost certainly, as any large-fruited annual cropper does, though we have seen no variety-specific thinning recommendation published.

The general rule holds: thin to one fruit per cluster four to six weeks after bloom if you want the size the variety is capable of.

It comes from an Ohio seedling in a Midwestern programme that selects explicitly for frost tolerance, which is a reasonable indication. We have not seen a published USDA zone rating specific to MAIA-L.

Zones 5 through 8 would be the sensible assumption on the strength of where it is grown, but we would not present that as a documented figure.

Two practical ones, neither about the fruit. It is restricted to MAIA members, so you cannot simply plant it. And it is new enough that the long-term record does not exist — trees went out in 2021, so nobody has twenty years of data on how it behaves in different regions.

A variety with a 1978 release like Liberty has four decades of orchards behind its claims. This one has a handful of years.

The cross dates from around 1998–2000 and the patent was filed in 2017, so the selection had roughly seventeen to nineteen years of evaluation before protection was sought. That is a normal and serious evaluation period.

What is short is the commercial record: widespread plantings only from 2021, and retail availability from 2024.

Not notably. The published descriptions give orange-red streaking over pale yellow with tan lenticel dots, and no reference to significant russeting.

Lenticel dots are not russet — they are the fruit’s breathing pores, and every apple has them.

Late. The variety harvests three to four weeks after Golden Delicious and about a week before EverCrisp — which puts it around the end of October in the North, roughly a week ahead of Fuji.

See Harvest Times for where this year’s crop actually stands; the date moves with the season.

Well — MAIA describes long storability and says it stores well in regular cold storage, without the controlled atmosphere large packers use.

In a home refrigerator, expect three to five months at good quality. The tropical aroma fades before the texture does, so the apple you eat in March will be sweeter and quieter than the one you ate in November.

Probably not. EverCrisp is the storage champion of the MAIA range and one of the best-keeping apples grown anywhere — that is what it was bred for and what its name is about.

Ludacrisp stores well by any normal standard. It is simply not competing in the same event.

Crisper drawer, in a loosely closed bag with a few holes punched in it. Cold and humid.

Do not wash before storing — that strips the natural bloom and leaves water sitting in the stem cavity. Keep them away from onions and anything strongly scented, and away from bananas.

For a week or so, and it is a good-looking apple to have out. Beyond that you are trading the crunch for the display.

Keep a couple of days’ worth in the bowl and the rest cold. That is the right answer for almost every apple.

Not quickly. It is a firm, crisp, late-picked apple, which is the profile that holds texture longest, and it keeps for months in ordinary cold storage.

Left warm on a counter for a month it will soften as anything would. Refrigerate it.

Yes. Core and slice, tray-freeze until hard, then bag with the air pressed out. About a year in the freezer, and they come out well for pie, crisp and sauce.

Dip the slices in lemon water first — Ludacrisp browns at a normal rate. Freezing destroys crispness in every apple, so use them cooked.

Partly. Aroma compounds are volatile and freezing costs you some of them, so a frozen-then-baked Ludacrisp is sweet and good but noticeably less perfumed than a fresh one.

If the distinctive flavour is why you bought it, eat them fresh and freeze something cheaper.

Yes — a firm, late, long-keeping apple is exactly what a cellar suits. Aim for 32 to 38 °F with high humidity, in shallow layers rather than deep bins.

Check weekly and pull anything bruised or breaking down before it gases the rest along.

Less than a soft apple, more than a very hard one. It is firm but not granite, and its thin tender skin is a small liability in handling.

Treat it as fruit rather than as freight. Bruised tissue is where storage rot starts.

No — unlike GoldRush or WineCrisp, this one is at its most expressive straight off the tree. The tropical aroma is loudest in the first weeks.

It will still be a very good apple in February. It will be a quieter one.

It moves with the season by a week or more either way, so we do not publish a fixed date. Harvest Times tracks where each variety stands as the crop comes in.

Apple Crop Growing 2026 lists what is still on the tree, and Ready to Ship shows what is leaving the farm today.

Rinse under cold running water and rub with your hand, as you would any fresh fruit. That is all it needs.

No soap and no produce wash.

Yes, and well — it is firm, large and keeps for months, which is the profile that travels. Packing matters more than the variety does.

Full details are on our shipping information page. Refrigerate the box when it arrives.

Fresh eating, first and emphatically. This is an apple bred by direct-market growers for people eating it out of hand, and the tropical aroma is largely lost when you cook it.

After that: salads, cheese boards, lunchboxes, and sweet cider. It bakes perfectly well, but you are baking away the thing that makes it special.

It works, with the caveat above. It is firm enough to hold its slices and sweet enough that you should cut the sugar by about a third against a Granny Smith recipe.

But the tropical character mostly cooks off, so you end up with a good ordinary pie made from an expensive unusual apple. Use Northern Spy or Rome for pie and keep the Ludacrisp for the bowl.

Reasonably well. It is a firm, crisp, late apple, and those hold up better than the tender McIntosh-line varieties.

Expect softened but distinct slices rather than either rigid wedges or mush. Cut a little thicker than usual because it is so juicy.

It makes a sweet, pale, pleasant sauce that needs no added sugar — and that is missing the point of the apple. The aroma does not survive the pot.

Use Liberty, McIntosh or Cortland for sauce. They break down willingly and cost less.

Very. It is firm enough to hold its edges against dressing, large enough that a few slices go a long way, and the tropical sweetness is genuinely interesting against bitter leaves, blue cheese or smoked meat.

Cut it close to serving or dress it straight away — it browns at a normal rate.

Sweet cider, yes, and it is worth doing — it presses a very aromatic juice and that tropical note survives pressing far better than it survives cooking.

Use it to perfume a blend and take structure from Golden Russet or GoldRush.

Quite good, and this is one cooked-adjacent use where the flavour survives, because drying concentrates rather than cooking off. Expect intensely sweet, aromatic rings.

Slice an eighth of an inch, skin on, and dry at 135 °F for six to ten hours. Dip the slices first — it browns normally.

Yes, a little. It is a very juicy apple and juicy apples make wet fillings. An extra tablespoon of flour or a teaspoon of cornstarch over a standard recipe is usually enough.

The maceration trick also works: toss the slices with the sugar, wait half an hour, pour off the liquid, reduce it in a pan and stir it back in.

Four or five for a standard 9-inch double-crust pie. Ludacrisp is large — one and a half to two to the pound — and a pie wants two and a half to three pounds of fruit.

That is fewer apples to peel than almost any variety, which is a real if unglamorous advantage.

Usually not. The skin is thin and tender and largely disappears in a pie or a crisp, and it carries colour.

Peel for a smooth sauce, a refined tart or a custard-set dessert where texture is the point.

Excellent, and it is one of the better uses. The tropical sweetness works against sharp cheddar, blue cheese and salty cured meat in a way an ordinary sweet apple does not.

Cut wedges rather than thin slices — they stay crisp longer and hold up to being dipped in things.

Yes. Thick rings in a hot dry pan or on a clean grate, three or four minutes a side. It is firm enough to survive the handling and sweet enough to caramelise readily.

Good next to pork, sausage or a sharp cheese. Salt it after it comes off the heat.

It works, though it is sweet on sweet — the classic caramel apple wants a tart variety to cut the sugar. Granny Smith is the traditional answer.

What Ludacrisp brings is size and crunch, both of which survive the dip well. Chill and dry the skin thoroughly first or the caramel slides.

Very well. Matchsticked into a cabbage slaw or a farro salad it keeps its bite, and the tropical note is unexpected and good against vinegar, mustard and smoked fish or pork.

It browns at a normal rate, so dress it as soon as it is cut.

Yes — it is large, which is exactly what a stuffed baked apple needs, and firm enough not to burst.

Rome is still the classic for this and holds its walls better. Ludacrisp is the better-tasting option if you are eating it plain rather than stuffing it.

Cold, whole, over a sink, within a few weeks of picking. Everything else is a compromise with an apple whose whole distinction is an aroma that does not survive heat.

If that sounds like a strange thing for a farm to print, it is the honest answer. We would rather you enjoyed the one you bought.

A medium Ludacrisp — about 250 grams — is roughly 120 to 140 calories. A small one is nearer 95 to 105; a large one runs 150 to 170.

The figure to work from is 52 calories per 100 grams, from USDA, for a raw apple with the skin on. Ludacrisp is a large apple, so a “medium apple” panel understates one of ours by a fair margin.

A large Ludacrisp of about 310 grams comes to roughly 150 to 170 calories.

Across the sizes we pack: small (~195 g) about 101, medium (~250 g) about 130, large (~310 g) about 161. Multiply the weight in grams by 0.52 for a close estimate at any size.

A small Ludacrisp of about 195 grams is roughly 95 to 105 calories.

A kitchen scale beats guessing from the word on the bag — and the apple count on a case is the quickest guide, since a 72-count fruit is considerably larger than a 125-count.

Per 100 grams of raw Ludacrisp with the skin on: about 52 calories, 13.81 g carbohydrate, 2.4 g fiber, 0.26 g protein, 0.17 g fat, 107 mg potassium and 85.56 g water.

For a medium apple of about 250 grams that is roughly 130 calories, 35 g carbohydrate and 6.0 g fiber. The full table by size is in the nutrition section above.

About 32 to 38 grams of total carbohydrate in a medium apple, of which roughly 6.0 grams is fiber — so approximately 29 grams of net carbs.

Per 100 grams that is 13.81 grams. That is typical for an apple.

Roughly 35 grams of total carbohydrate in a medium apple, with about 6.0 grams of that being dietary fiber.

Essentially all of an apple’s calories are carbohydrate — there is almost no fat and, in this cultivar, about 0.26 grams of protein per 100 grams.

About 24 to 28 grams in a medium apple, all of it the fruit’s own — nothing is added. That is 10.4 grams per 100 grams of fruit.

Ludacrisp is sweet, tropical and startlingly fruity — people reach for words like pineapple and bubblegum — with enough tartness underneath to keep it from being cloying.

About 6.0 grams in a medium apple with the skin on — 2.4 grams per 100 grams.

That is about average for an apple. Peeling costs you roughly a third of it.

Very little of either: about 0.7 grams of protein and 0.4 grams of fat in a medium apple, and virtually no sodium.

Apples are almost entirely water and carbohydrate — Ludacrisp is about 85.56 percent water by weight.

About 107 mg per 100 grams, so roughly 268 mg in a medium apple.

That is typical for an apple.

About 11.5 mg in a medium apple — 4.6 mg per 100 grams.

Apples are not a major vitamin C source next to citrus; an orange carries roughly ten times as much. What there is sits mostly just under the skin and degrades with heat, so a raw unpeeled apple retains more of it than a baked one.

For fiber, yes — roughly a third of it sits in the skin, along with most of the fruit’s colour compounds.

Ludacrisp skin is thin and tender for a large apple, streaked orange-red over pale yellow with tan lenticel dots. Leave it on; peeling costs you the colour and gains you nothing. Rinse under running water and rub with your hands before eating, as with any fresh fruit.

Roughly two large, three medium or four small apples make a pound — three medium is the standard working assumption in American recipes.

Ludacrisp is a large apple — ours typically run 200 to 300 grams — so one and a half to two to the pound is normal. A 9-inch pie takes four or five.

Texture similar, flavour not remotely. Honeycrisp is bright, balanced and classically appley, with that famous light explosive cell structure. Ludacrisp is sweeter, far more aromatic, and tastes tropical to the point that people name chewing gum.

Honeycrisp is the more refreshing apple; Ludacrisp is the more memorable one.

The two MAIA apples we grow, and a study in how differently one programme can breed. EverCrisp is MAIA1, a Fuji × Honeycrisp cross: dense, balanced, classically flavoured and the best keeper of the pair.

Ludacrisp is MAIA-L from an open-pollinated Sweet 16: tropical, perfumed, juicier, and ready about a week earlier. Buy EverCrisp for February; buy Ludacrisp for November.

Parent and child. Sweet 16 is the University of Minnesota variety famous for tasting of anise, cherry candy or vanilla rather than of apple — and that unusual-flavour gene is clearly what came down to Ludacrisp.

Ludacrisp is larger, later, crisper, longer-keeping and more tropical than aniseed. It is Sweet 16’s strangeness in a modern commercial fruit.

Both are very sweet, very late, very juicy and store well. Fuji is the denser and finer-grained of the two, with a cleaner, simpler sweetness and no aromatic eccentricity at all.

Ludacrisp ripens about a week earlier and is the far more distinctive apple. If Fuji is what your household eats and you want the same sweetness with a personality, this is the step across.

Two of the most-marketed new apples in America, from opposite models. Cosmic Crisp is WA 38, a Washington State University variety with an enormous coordinated launch behind it, balanced and firm and an outstanding keeper.

Ludacrisp is a grower co-operative selection with a name a farmer thought of, sweeter and far more aromatic. Cosmic Crisp is the better all-rounder; Ludacrisp is the one people talk about after they eat it.

The two sweet-shop apples we grow, and they get confused constantly because of the names.

Ludacrisp is tropical rather than pear-like and carries more acid, so it reads as balanced where CandyCrisp reads as frankly sweet. Neither is related to the other.

Same general direction, different intensity. Gala is sweet, mild and floral, small to medium, and ripens two months earlier.

Ludacrisp is much larger, much crisper, much later and far more aromatic. Gala is the everyday apple; this is not one.

Opposite ends of the modern apple.

Ludacrisp is sweet, tropical, bicolour, juicy and crisp in a lighter way. WineCrisp is the more serious apple; Ludacrisp is the more immediately likeable one.

Both sweet and aromatic, and both easily confused by name. AutumnCrisp is Cornell NY 674 — floral rather than tropical, browns very slowly, ripens a month earlier, and does not keep.

Ludacrisp is later, keeps for months, browns normally, and is the more assertive flavour. For a lunchbox platter AutumnCrisp; for a bowl in December, Ludacrisp.

Its own parent, Sweet 16, and after that honestly nothing very close. That is rather the point of the variety.

For the sweetness and size, Fuji or EverCrisp. For an unusual aromatic flavour, Sweet 16 or CandyCrisp. Nothing gives you both at once.

If you want to taste something you have not tasted before, yes, and there is not much competition. If you want a reliable everyday eating apple, a cheaper sweet variety will do the same job.

Our honest advice: buy a few first. This is a polarising flavour and there is no point buying a case of an apple you turn out not to like.

Because it is restricted to MAIA member growers and the trees only went out in 2021. An apple tree planted in 2021 gives a real crop around 2024 to 2026.

It reached Sprouts from 2024 and remains scarce elsewhere. This is a supply curve, not a shortage — there will be far more of it in five years.

Different, and better at some specific things: it is sweeter, more aromatic, larger, later, keeps longer, crops annually and resists disease. Honeycrisp is brighter, more refreshing and has the better texture for most palates.

From a grower’s point of view it is not close — Ludacrisp is a far easier tree. From an eater’s point of view it depends entirely on whether you like the flavour.

It is a very good apple that is priced and supplied like a specialty one, which makes it an awkward everyday choice. And the flavour is assertive enough that some people tire of it faster than they would of a mild apple.

For everyday eating at volume, Gala, Fuji or EverCrisp make more sense. Keep this one as the apple you hand somebody to watch their face.

Both enormously crunchy. Honeycrisp is the more balanced, familiar apple; Ludacrisp is the one that makes people laugh at the first bite because it tastes tropical.

If you want a reliable everyday apple, Honeycrisp. If you want to surprise somebody, Ludacrisp.

Honestly, nothing much. Its parent Sweet 16 is the closest relative in flavour — another variety famous for tasting of confectionery rather than apple.

People reach for pineapple, melon, and sometimes bubblegum. Once you have had one you will recognise it anywhere.

Here, shipped from the farm when the crop is in, and from MAIA member orchards and farm stands. Since 2024 it has also appeared in Sprouts Farmers Markets.

It is not in general supermarket distribution and will not be for some years. See Ready to Ship for what is leaving the farm today.

Packed in trays or cells so the fruit cannot shift, and moved as fast as the destination allows. It ships well — large, firm and a good keeper — but the skin is thin, so packing does real work.

Full details on packing, transit and destinations are on our shipping information page. Refrigerate the box on arrival.

Yes. Case and bulk quantities are on our bulk and case apples page.

A bushel runs about 40 to 42 pounds, which at one and a half to two apples per pound is roughly 65 to 85 Ludacrisps. It keeps for months, so a case is a reasonable thing to buy — but taste one first.

It depends on the size running that season, because apples are packed by weight rather than by count. At our typical size — 195 to 310 grams, so one and a half to two apples per pound — a 40 to 42 pound bushel works out around 65 to 85 fruit.

That is the opposite end of the scale from Lady apples, which run six to ten to the pound and give you 250 to 400 in the same bushel.

Patent royalty on every tree, restricted propagation, very young plantings, small volumes, and hand picking. Nearly every cost runs the wrong way for cheapness.

A supermarket commodity apple is priced on millions of bushels and decades of established orchards. This one is priced on trees planted in 2021.

Almost certainly, as plantings mature and volume grows — that is what happened with EverCrisp, which is now widely available at ordinary prices after the same slow start.

The patent runs into the late 2030s, so the royalty component stays until then.

Only as a MAIA member. The variety is patented and propagation is restricted to the association’s members — a home gardener cannot order one from a general nursery.

That is unusual. Most modern varieties are licensed widely; this one deliberately is not. We sell fruit, not trees.

Rootstock decides, as with any apple. What is specific to this variety is that the tree structure is described as well suited to high-density plantings, which means dwarfing rootstock on a trellis at close spacing.

We have not seen a published mature size for MAIA-L on a standard rootstock, so we will not invent one.

We have seen no published pollination group or self-fertility statement for MAIA-L specifically, so the honest answer is that we do not know and will not guess.

The safe general rule for a late-blooming apple applies: plant at least one other compatible variety flowering at the same time, and do not rely on a triploid such as Mutsu or Jonagold, whose pollen is sterile.

The general rule holds: two to four years on a dwarfing rootstock, three to five on semi-dwarf. In a high-density system on dwarfing stock, which is how this variety is meant to be grown, the shorter end is realistic.

The national picture bears that out — trees went out in 2021 and fruit reached retail in 2024.

No. It is picked at the end of October and, kept well, lasts into late winter or early spring. Outside that window there simply are none.

See Ready to Ship for what is available today and Harvest Times for where the season stands.

Start small. Buy two or three pounds, decide whether you are in the camp that loves this flavour, and then order a case if you are.

If you already know you like it: two apples to the pound, and it keeps three to five months refrigerated, so a household of four eating an apple a day gets about a fortnight from five pounds.

Yes — we are a MAIA grower and we pick and ship it ourselves. That is also why we can tell you things about it that a reseller could not.

See Apple Crop Growing 2026 for what is still on the tree this season.

Ask us. We grow it, pick it and ship it, and this is a new enough variety that there is very little reliable information about it anywhere — we would rather answer a question than have you piece it together from marketing pages.

Contact details and our general handling advice are on the Honeycrisp.com apple FAQ, and the full apple varieties guide puts every apple we grow side by side.

Anybody who thinks apples all taste much the same. It is sweet, wildly aromatic and genuinely unlike anything else on a farm stand.

It is also a very good apple for children, who tend to love the pineapple note that some adults find startling.

Yes, when the crop allows. It is a popular one, and the season is not long, so it is worth asking early.

What is available today is on Ready to Ship.