ABSTRACT
Our modern apple production systems have substantially increased in productivity and sophistication over the last several decades. Much of the rest of this book focuses on the science and technology by which those increases have occurred. However, like many other modern farming systems, increased productivity often results in undesirable environmental impacts, which lower the overall sustainability of the enterprise (Merwin and Pritts, 1993) (Fig. 1). Focusing on increasing yields and fruit quality at the sacrifice of maintaining agricultural resource bases such as land, water and biodiversity can significantly threaten the long-term viability of orchards, particularly if resources become so degraded or contaminated that future production becomes limited or impossible.
