Isparta and Amasya

How apples came

Apples are old in Amasya. In rescue excavations at the village of Yavru, Hitit University’s Black Sea Archaeology Research Centre uncovered a Roman-period mosaic floor with an apple tree worked into it, thought to be about 2,000 years old, and the province’s registration of its apple takes it as evidence of apple growing there since then¹¹. The town’s name has passed to a kind of apple, the Amasya apple, red on one face and yellowish-green on the other, thin-skinned, fragrant and long-keeping¹⁶, and the Amasya apple travelled: before the 1950s the apples of Eğirdir, in Isparta, were scattered trees of Amasya and Ferik apples¹.

Isparta’s orchards are younger, and owe much to two state projects. In the 1950s the outlet of Lake Eğirdir was deepened and joined to Lake Kovada, which turned the marshy Boğazova, the valley between the two lakes, into farmland; the Boğazova irrigation scheme followed in 1969. In 1952 a state nursery was founded in the valley, and in the 1950s its director, Mustafa Akay, and an agricultural technician, Halil Üstün, helped to plant block orchards of Red Delicious; the nursery handed out trees of the variety to farmers, and the industry grew from there¹. The nursery went through several names and became the Fruit Research Institute in 2015¹. In 2014 Isparta grew about 650,000 tonnes of apples, a quarter of Turkey’s, and Eğirdir a third of Isparta’s¹.

Amasya kept its own apple. Its misket apple was registered with the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office as a designation of origin, no. 424, applied for on 8 January 2016 and registered on 14 March 2019, for the central district and six others¹¹.

How they’re grown

Eğirdir lies at about 940 m, in a climate between the continental interior and the Mediterranean. The Boğazova, 2 to 2.5 km wide and about 25 km long between high ridges, draws silt from the mountains and moist air from the lakes, and the district governorship credits the lakes with keeping late spring frost away¹. In the lakes’ basin, in 1995–2014, frost came on 10 to 30 days a year by the shore against 60 to 90 in the high north and east, and most of the basin gets 1,500 to 2,000 units of winter chill, the lake shore 1,000 to 1,500; a basin plan of 2026 expects warming to cut chill at low altitude and advises moving new orchards to cooler slopes and heights⁸.

Water is the strain. The governor called Lake Eğirdir the source of life of Isparta’s farming; at the end of the 2023 irrigation season it was close to its minimum level, and for 2024 a 34% cut in irrigation was planned even in the good case⁷. In 2022 closed, piped systems made up only about 28% of Isparta’s irrigation, and the governor urged growers to drip and sprinkler systems. The province then had 10,138 registered apple growers and 108 cold stores holding 457,250 tonnes⁶.

Amasya’s misket apples grow at 411 to 1,150 m, where the Black Sea and Central Anatolian climates meet and the Yeşilırmak valley makes its own breeze. The variety needs 2,536 hours of winter chill, and Amasya averaged 2,526 hours in 1970–2014. From mid-September to the end of October, dew followed by sun brings out the bright red that marks the fruit. The trees are grafted on seedlings or on MM111 and MM106 rootstocks and planted 8 or 10 m apart, bear in their seventh or eighth year and crop for 35 to 50 years, heavily one year and lightly the next; Golden Delicious is used to pollinate them¹¹. In 2020 there were 193 registered misket growers, with 509 decares¹².

What’s picked

Turkey grew 4.4 million tonnes of apples in 2024; Isparta led in production, with 23.1%, while Niğde had the most planted area³. In 2025, a year of frost, the national crop fell by 48.3%^3,4, and Isparta’s 799,126 tonnes from 213,084 decares made up 34.95% of it: Eğirdir picked 297,798 tonnes from 61,600 decares, Gelendost 267,340 tonnes from 60,862 decares, Senirkent 89,555 tonnes and Aksu 44,331². TÜİK’s second estimate for 2026 expects apple production to rise by 97.4%⁵.

Red Delicious and Golden Delicious lead in Eğirdir, with orchards of Gala, Granny Smith, Fuji and Braeburn besides¹. Nationally, TÜİK’s figures for 2020 put Red Delicious at 39% of the crop, Golden Delicious at 24%, Amasya apples at 6% and Granny Smith at 4%; Amasya province’s 34,131 tonnes that year were 28% Golden Delicious, 26% Amasya, 22% Red Delicious and 9% Granny Smith¹². Few Amasya apples now come from Amasya: of Turkey’s 237,219 tonnes in 2024, the province grew 2,455¹³. For 2026 the provincial directorate expected 6,462 tonnes of misket apples from 2,220 decares and about 35,000 tonnes of apples of all kinds¹⁴.

By the Isparta directorate’s growing guide, Gala is picked at the end of August or early in September, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious in the last week of September, and Fuji ripens in early October⁹. The misket apple is picked in the second half of September or early in October, and keeps until May¹¹. Isparta’s apples are graded, packed and kept in cold stores, to be sold through the year². Turkey exported 1,791,000 tonnes of apples in 2023/24³, and Isparta about 160,000 tonnes in 2022 up to the end of November⁶.

On the table

Gelendost holds its apple festival with the anniversary of the Battle of Myriokephalon of 1176, and opens the district’s harvest there¹⁰. In Amasya the misket harvest opens with a ceremony in the orchards; a grower says the apple goes into cologne, apple tea, molasses and vinegar¹⁴, and the registration notes that drying it lets the apple be eaten all year¹¹. Growers keep their misket apples in a kara depo on the lower floor of the house, and in cold stores they give them rooms of their own¹¹.

In Turkish the apple, and the tree, are elma¹⁵, and the Amasya elması is the Amasya apple¹⁶.

Notes

• The Fruit Research Institute at Eğirdir keeps more than 400 apple types and varieties¹.
• Eğirdir alone has 150,000 tonnes of cold storage¹.
• A misket apple weighs 100 to 165 g, with 10 to 14% soluble solids¹¹.
• Other apples, Gala and Fuji among them, are sold under the misket name¹².

Where the sources disagree

• Irrigated area. The district governorship credits the Boğazova scheme of 1969 with 25,000 ha¹; DSİ, the state water works, says the water it releases there irrigates 30,000 decares, or 3,000 ha⁷.
• Frost. The district governorship says the lakes keep late spring frost away from the Boğazova¹; frost cut Turkey’s 2025 crop by nearly half^3,4, and Isparta’s output fell from 1.1 million tonnes in 2021 to 799,126 in 2025^2,6, though no source gives Isparta’s own losses to frost.
• Isparta’s share. A quarter in 2014¹, 23.1% in 2024³ and 34.95% in 2025, when frost hit the rest of the country harder²; the last clause is my inference.
• Red Delicious. TÜİK and the sources that follow it count Red Delicious under a nursery’s trade name¹²; it is written here as Red Delicious.
• Amasya’s misket crop. Figures swing: 2,455 tonnes of Amasya apples in 2024¹³ against a forecast of 6,462 tonnes of misket apples for 2026¹⁴; the variety crops heavily only every other year^11,14.