Golden Delicious

History

Golden Delicious arose from a chance seedling, possibly a hybrid of Grimes Golden and Golden Reinette. The original tree was found on the family farm of J. M. Mullins in Clay County, West Virginia, and was locally known as Mullins' Yellow Seedling. Mullins sold the tree and propagation rights to Stark Brothers Nurseries for $5000, which first marketed it as a companion of their Red Delicious in 1914. For much of the twentieth century, the Golden Delicious, the Red Delicious, and the Granny Smith were the top three apple varieties in the United States in terms of sales at supermarkets. According to the U.S. Apple Association, as of 2025, the Golden Delicious and two of its descendants, the Gala and Honeycrisp, remain in the top nine most popular varieties in that country.

Golden Delicious was designated the official state fruit of West Virginia by a Senate resolution on February 20, 1995. Clay County has hosted an annual Golden Delicious Festival since 1972. The Golden Delicious was one of four varieties honored by the United States Postal Service in a 2013 set of four 33¢ stamps commemorating historic strains, joined by the Northern Spy, Baldwin, and Granny Smith apples.

In 1943, the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York developed the Jonagold apple by cross-breeding Golden Delicious and Jonathan trees. The cultivar was officially released in 1968 and went on to become the leading apple cultivar in Europe. As of 2025, the Golden Delicious is still one of the top apples in the European Union.

In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced they had decoded the complete genome of the Golden Delicious apple. It had the highest number of genes (57,000) of any plant genome studied to date.