The surprising reason this popular grocery item looks a little different this year

An unseasonably warm winter has left some of Australia’s most popular fruit products looking a little different this year. The effect is most noticeable for red apples, some of which have less colour than usual.

There are several varieties of red apples currently on sale in supermarkets, including Pink Lady, Royal Gala, Kanzi, Envy, and Jazz.

Craig Gauci, co-manager of award-winning Sydney fruit store Minchinbury Fruit Market, told nine.com.au fruit needs winter frosts to develop full colour.

“The weather has been OK lately, so there is good supply at the moment. A couple of lines are a bit scarce, like pineapples. But apart from that everything is in plentiful supply because we’re having a warm winter at the moment.

“It’s only in the last day or two that it has cooled off a little bit, but it has been really warm. We should be having lots of frosts.

“And I think we’ve had 10ml of rain. Up until the end of June, we should have had 130ml of rain.

“Frosts make fruit a lot sweeter and put a lot of colour on fruit.

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“Apples need a couple of good frosts to get the real deep redness in the fruit before they get picked.”

The lack of winter frosts may also impact the appearance of some fruits well into spring.

The warmer winter also means there may be a delay on some popular fruits, including mangoes, peaches and nectarines.

“Everything will be delayed,” Gauci said.

“All that fruit should be going dormant to rest for the winter period. Instead, it’s still warm, so that means it keeps shooting, and eventually the cool is going to come, and then we’re going to get some frost and then that’s going to burn the new shoots.”

For now, most fruit and vegetable lines are plentiful, although a little less vibrant than usual, including watermelon, grapes, berries, broccolini, cauliflower, cabbage, silver beet and zucchini.

Apples are Australia’s second-highest selling supermarket fruit. The most popular is bananas, which have also been showing a changed appearance due to the weather.

A sign at Woolworths explained due to cooler growing conditions in banana growing regions, “the usually bright yellow skin of bananas may look a bit dull”.

“Although their appearance may be affected, their quality and taste remain the same.”

Customers have also reported bananas have been taking longer to ripen up.

Anton van den Berg, co-founder of fruit wholesale distributors Box Divvy and Harvest, explained to nine.com.au: ”As the weather cools, bananas will get a dull look rather than bright yellow. This typically happens from May to September,” he told nine.com.au.

“However, this does not affect their eating quality.

“We always notice this when we get fruit from Coffs Harbour: they take an extra four to six weeks, but they’re super-sweet (but also cosmetically challenged).”