I found a handful of apples with this type of surface damage. The one on the left was a spiral that went all the way around the fruit.
When I cut into the apple… nuthin’
Mike
Mike
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excessive water, too much rain…that would be my guess.
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I think Jeremy’s right- especially if you have heavy soil or it’s not particularly well drained.
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I don’t think that is the case.
- My trees are slightly mounded
- This is only on 5 or 6 applets out of 40+trees.
- We have had no heavy rain here.
Mike
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Frost damage to the fruit when they were smaller?
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Well, then I don’t know. But I think we can assume that some abrupt change in growth happened- and maybe TurkeyCreekTrees is right. It definitely doesn’t look buggy or diseased to me, so that leaves an environmental factor.
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I just posted similar question in the disease identification thread. Only two apples from the last year graft look very russeted and cracked, all the other fruits from many other varieties seem to be normal. I worried that it might be a disease or virus issue.
These fruitlets looked similar to yours when they were younger.
So I read a little and found out that russeting and cracking is a common problem in some varieties of apples. Mine is Cox’s Orange. It is caused by the different stress factors, such as sulfuric sprays, humid weather, certain fungus, microelement deficiency. But the main factor is genetics and the thickness of the skin and the wax layer on the apple. At least it is a disorder and not a contagious disease. 
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I had that problem on my Harrelson a couple years ago. When I did the research I found an article from the University of Minnesota that tied early russeting and the resulting cracking to excessive moisture. That year we did have our wettest spring since the 1800’s . Since then I’ve been careful never to get it wet when watering and never spray it in the evening.
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That is exactly how mine looked. I just remembered the russeting when you just mentioned it.
Thanx
Mike
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