In the last decade, Gala has rapidly grown to become the dominant apple variety in the United States. Having replaced Red Delicious in production in 2018, wholesale growers have come to appreciate Gala as a productive, annual cropper with reliable fruit quality. While Gala may not be a favorite of apple snobs, its attractive color, mild sweet flavor, and soft flesh appeals to a broad range of consumers.

In the late 1930s, J.H. Kidd was developing large numbers of apple crosses at his farm in Wairarapa, New Zealand. Kidd created many crosses from Cox Orange Pippin × Golden Delicious, and while he died in 1945, other New Zealand researchers continued observing his many crosses. By the mid-1950s, researchers at the Havelock North Research Orchard (NZ) found the test variety Kidd’s D8 (Kidd’s Orange x Golden Delicious) to be exceptional. The variety was named Gala, and commercial plantings began in the 1960s. In 1974, Stark Brothers Nursery (one of the largest commercial nurseries at the time) obtained the U.S. patent and trademark for Gala. Stark Brothers Nursery was one of the most respected wholesale nurseries at the time, and fruit growers were steadily enticed to plant Gala.

Gala is also quite prone to color mutation, and it wasn’t long before improved sports were replacing the original Gala in nursery catalogs. Gala eventually joined varieties like McIntosh, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious as a necessary variety in the commercial grower’s planting portfolio. The success of Gala continues today, and its prevalence to mutate continues to lead nurseries to promote improvements in color, size, and ripening time.

Below you’ll find our Gala information sheet for easy reference. If you’d like to download a copy to print, you’ll find that here: Download the PDF.

J.H. Kidd and staff packing apples 1930 © Wairarapa Archive