Almaty

How apples came

The apple was here before the city. Crossing the Zailiysky Alatau from Lake Issyk-Kul in 1929, Nikolai Vavilov wrote that “Alma-Ata, literally translated, means ‘father of apples’” (translated), and that thickets of wild apple ran far along the mountain slopes around it, forming whole forests. Unlike the small wild apples of the Caucasus, Kazakhstan’s were mostly large-fruited, hardly different from cultivated sorts. It was 1 September, when the apples ripen, and he judged himself in “a remarkable centre of origin of the cultivated apple” (translated)¹.

Genome studies have since given the wild apple its due. The apple genome published in 2010 identified Malus sieversii as the progenitor of the cultivated apple⁴, and the Red List of Trees of Central Asia calls it one of the main ones². A 2012 study of 839 wild and cultivated trees from China to Spain added a twist: the European crab apple, M. sylvestris, was a major secondary contributor, and gene flow between the two has left today’s apple genetically closer to the crab apple than to its Central Asian ancestor⁵.

The town began as a Russian fort, founded in 1854 in a tract called Almaty, Kazakh for “appley”, and soon named Vernoye; the town of Verny grew round it⁶. Travellers before the settlers had admired the fruit thickets of the Alatau, and, as an account drawn from the fruit institute’s scientists puts it, the slopes at 1,100–1,400 m were “the kingdom of the various forms of wild apple” (translated). By their account, in 1865 Yegor Redko, a settler from Ostrogozhsk district in Voronezh province, brought a few Aport saplings to Verny, having carried them in tubs for two years; he grafted them on local stock and gave cuttings to his neighbours, and the variety spread through the district. The Verny school of horticulture and Moiseev’s private nursery, which raised more than 100,000 trees a year, carried it across south-eastern Kazakhstan, and in 1908 the school’s Aport apples were warmly received at a fruit show in Mannheim, in Germany⁷. In 1913 Nikita Moiseev won a large gold medal for his Verny Aport at the All-Russian exhibition in Moscow⁸. When Vavilov came, the city’s orchards held “the best European assortment, beginning with the famous Aport” (translated)¹.

In 1921 the town was given the tract’s name, in the form Alma-Ata⁶. The Aport entered Kazakhstan’s register of approved varieties in 1965. By 1970 the republic had 107,000 ha of orchards, and a census of fruit trees that year counted 3,851,193 Aport trees, 78.8% of them in Alma-Ata oblast⁷.

How they’re grown

Almaty’s apples grow in the foothills north of the Zailiysky (Trans-Ili) Alatau, at 900–1,700 m, in Talgar, Enbekshikazakh and Karasai districts and in the city’s foothill districts of Bostandyk and Medeu¹⁰. Intensive orchards now cover about 2,200 ha of the region’s 9,900 ha of apple orchards¹³. The Aport is more particular. It does best at 900–1,200 m, says the fruit institute⁹; it is grafted only on seedlings of the wild apple, planted at just 208 trees a hectare, and bears its first fruit in its seventh or eighth year⁷, and one grower reckons on ten to twelve years before a full crop¹¹.

The wild forests are in trouble. The IUCN lists M. sieversii as Vulnerable, with a falling population, on an assessment made in 2007 that it marks as needing an update³. The Red List of Trees of Central Asia found in 2009 that its habitat in Kazakhstan had shrunk by more than 70% in thirty years; the threats it named were farming and building, overgrazing, and genetic erosion through the grafting of orchard varieties and hybridisation².

The Aport’s orchards have gone the same way. Building on Almaty’s foothills, the growers’ association says, has taken much of their land; the agriculture ministry counts about 2,400 ha of Aport in Kazakhstan, much of it old, and the farms of the Aport growers’ association hold more than 200 ha in Almaty and in Talgar and Enbekshikazakh districts¹¹. In autumn 2023 the Almaty Aport was registered as a geographical indication⁹. A state programme gathered wild apple seed in the Dzungarian Alatau in 2024 to raise rootstocks⁹, planted the first 10 ha of new Aport orchard at the fruit institute’s Talgar branch in 2025, and means to reach 110 ha by the end of 2027, with a crop expected around 2032–2033¹¹.

What’s picked

Kazakhstan harvested 2,051,786.9 centners (205,178.69 tonnes) of apples in 2025 from 26,207.3 ha of bearing orchards, on the national statistics bureau’s figures. Almaty region harvested 558,976 centners (55,897.6 tonnes) from 6,306.3 ha, at 95.9 centners a hectare: more than a quarter of the national crop, second only to Turkestan region’s 864,158.9 centners. The city of Almaty itself picked 9,373.9 centners¹². Enbekshikazakh district leads the region with about 34,100 tonnes a year, followed by the Uighur, Talgar, Karasai and Zhambyl districts¹³.

The region grows 21 varieties, among them the Almaty Aport, Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious and Idared, and Gala sells best abroad; its Aport orchards, about 2,300 ha, yield about 6,600 tonnes a year¹³. The Aport is big: fruit of the blood-red Aport weigh 300 to 900 g⁹. Picking usually starts in September and in some districts runs to the end of October¹¹. In Almaty region the Aport is an autumn and winter apple⁷, and the dictionary calls it long-keeping¹⁶. Most of the crop is sold at home, and about a fifth was to be exported in 2026, mainly to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Belarus¹³.

On the table

Every September the city administration holds Alma Fest, a festival dedicated to the Aport, where visitors taste its varieties and dishes made from it¹⁴. The FAO sees uses for Almaty’s apples fresh and as juice concentrate, 100% direct-pressed juice, applesauce, jam and pectin¹⁰, and about a tenth of the region’s 2026 crop was meant for juice, purée and jam¹³.

The Kazakh word for apple, алма (alma), also names the apple tree; an apple orchard is алма бағы, and алма бет қыз describes a rosy-cheeked girl, usually a beauty¹⁵. The Russian апорт, a large, long-keeping apple, takes its name, Ushakov’s dictionary says, from the Portuguese city of Oporto¹⁶.

Notes

• Almaty’s Aport apples are Kazakhstan’s entry in the FAO’s One Country One Priority Product initiative (2023)¹⁰.
• Kazakhstan’s fruit institute has bred about 200 fruit varieties, some 30 of them from the Aport, and its Talgar branch has gathered 115 Aport clones⁹.
• The IUCN’s assessment came from a workshop on Central Asia’s trees held at Bishkek in July 2006³.
• From Alma-Ata Vavilov went on by car towards the Chinese border, to Kulja¹.

Where the sources disagree

• “Father of apples”. Vavilov renders Alma-Ata, and the Red List of Trees of Central Asia Almaty, as “father of apples”^1,2. Pospelov’s toponymic dictionary says the official form Alma-Ata, adopted in 1921, was a mistake for the tract’s name, Almaty, “appley”, where alma is “apple” and ata “father”; in Kazakhstan the city is Almaty⁶.
• The apple’s ancestor. The genome paper names M. sieversii as the progenitor⁴; Cornille and colleagues agree it was the main contributor but find today’s apple genetically closer to the European crab apple⁵.
• Who made the Aport. The fruit institute credits Yegor Redko, who brought the trees in 1865^7,9. A great-granddaughter of the nurseryman Nikita Moiseev, citing the 1983 encyclopaedia Alma-Ata, which names Redko only as a settler, credits Moiseev⁸.
• The Aport’s altitude. 900–1,200 m for the institute’s deputy chair⁹, 850–1,250 m for the director of its Talgar branch⁷; the FAO puts apple growing generally at 900–1,700 m¹⁰.
• Areas and crops. The ministry puts the Aport at about 2,400 ha in all Kazakhstan^9,11, the regional figures at about 2,300 ha in Almaty region alone; the same figures give about 9,900 ha of apple orchards and expected about 100,000 tonnes for 2026¹³, against the statistics bureau’s 6,306.3 ha of bearing orchards and 55,897.6 tonnes for 2025¹².
• Arithmetic. The tonnes are my conversion of the bureau’s centners (100 kg), and “more than a quarter” (27.2%) is my calculation¹².
• Not used. A 2025 review cites losses of about 90% of the wild apples near Almaty since 1935, and a fall to 7% of the 1930 area; neither figure was checked in its original, and the second is not in the 2009 Red List.