Apples grown from seed tend to be very different from those of their parents, and the resultant fruit frequently lacks desired characteristics.

Different cultivars are bred for various tastes and uses, including cooking, eating raw, and cider or apple juice production.

Trees and fruit are prone to fungal, bacterial, and pest problems, which can be controlled by a number of organic and non-organic means.

[1] Leaves can be simple ovals (elliptic), medium or wide in width, somewhat egg-shaped with the wider portion toward their base (ovate), or even with sides that are more parallel to each other instead of curved (oblong) with a narrow pointed end.

This was widely accepted, however the botanist Philip Miller published an alternate classification in The Gardeners Dictionary with the apple species separated from Pyrus in 1754.

[24] At the Sammardenchia-Cueis site near Udine in Northeastern Italy, seeds from some form of apples have been found in material carbon dated to between 6570 and 5684 BCE.

He says they should be placed in a room with good air circulation from a north facing window on a bed of straw, chaff, or mats with windfalls kept separately.

[38] Apple cultivars brought as seed from Europe were spread along Native American trade routes, as well as being cultivated on colonial farms.

[38] In the 20th century, irrigation projects in Eastern Washington began and allowed the development of the multibillion-dollar fruit industry, of which the apple is the leading product.

Even in the case when a triploid plant can produce a seed (apples are an example), it occurs infrequently, and seedlings rarely survive.

[48] Apples have been acclimatized in Ecuador at very high altitudes, where they can often, with the needed factors, provide crops twice per year because of constant temperate conditions year-round.

Apples are commonly stored in chambers with lowered concentrations of oxygen to reduce respiration and slow softening and other changes if the fruit is already fully ripe.

For storage longer than about six months the apples are picked earlier, before full ripeness, when ethylene production by the fruit is low.

[69] In Europe, apple breeding programs are conducted at places such as Julius Kühn-Institut, the German federal research center for cultivated plants.

[72] However, it is also difficult to grow and to store, prompting the industry to seek hybrids that not only appeal to consumers are also less costly for farmers to cultivate and last longer in storage.

Some find them to have better flavor than modern cultivars, but they may have other problems that make them commercially unviable—low yield, disease susceptibility, poor tolerance for storage or transport, or just being the "wrong" size.

[78] A few old cultivars are still produced on a large scale, but many have been preserved by home gardeners and farmers that sell directly to local markets.

In the United Kingdom, old cultivars such as 'Cox's Orange Pippin' and 'Egremont Russet' are still commercially important even though by modern standards they are low yielding and susceptible to disease.

[80] The U.S. National Library of Medicine's Hazardous Substances Data Bank records no cases of amygdalin poisoning from consuming apple seeds.

Reactions, which entail oral allergy syndrome (OAS), generally involve itching and inflammation of the mouth and throat,[82] but in rare cases can also include life-threatening anaphylaxis.

A reference serving of a raw apple with skin weighing 100 g (3.5 oz) provides 52 calories and a moderate content of dietary fiber (table).

[100] In Norse mythology, the goddess Iðunn is portrayed in the Prose Edda (written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson) as providing apples to the gods that give them eternal youthfulness.

[101] Rerir's wife's consumption of the apple results in a six-year pregnancy and the birth (by Caesarean section) of their son—the hero Völsung.

Further, Davidson notes that the potentially Germanic goddess Nehalennia is sometimes depicted with apples and that parallels exist in early Irish stories.

Davidson concludes that in the figure of Iðunn "we must have a dim reflection of an old symbol: that of the guardian goddess of the life-giving fruit of the other world.

"[101] Apples appear in many religious traditions, including Greek and Roman mythology where it has an ambiguous symbolism of discord, fertility, or courtship.

She outran all but Hippomenes (also known as Melanion, a name possibly derived from melon, the Greek word for both "apple" and fruit in general),[104] who defeated her by cunning, not speed.

Hippomenes knew that he could not win in a fair race, so he used three golden apples (gifts of Aphrodite, the goddess of love) to distract Atalanta.

[112] Though the forbidden fruit of Eden in the Book of Genesis is not identified, popular Christian tradition has held that it was an apple that Eve coaxed Adam to share with her.

[113] The origin of the popular identification with a fruit unknown in the Middle East in biblical times is found in wordplay with the Latin words mālum (an apple) and mălum (an evil), each of which is normally written malum.