WA38 is Now Cosmic Crisp Part 2

WA38 is Now Cosmic Crisp Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

Not all fruit is created equal and that really goes for the growing process. Some varieties of apples just seem to take more input to make them come out. Honey Crisp is one of those varieties. But according to WSU Associate Professor, Kate Evans, the new Cosmic Crisp was made for northwest growing conditions.

EVANS: From what we've seen so far it's actually going to be a relatively easy apple to grow. It doesn't seem to have many of the issues that the growers are associating with growing Honey Crisp, which is one of its parents.

It will be some time though before producers get their hands on the stock.

EVANS: It's a great issue to have. We've had a lot of interest from the industry in regards to getting hold of the trees and it's a fairly slow, or can be a fairly slow process to build up the required number of trees to satisfy the industry. So we decided that rather than allotting trees out to the first person who put an order in at the nursery we would try and have a fair and equitable drawing process.

Evans says they hope to have about 300-thousand trees available in 2017 and it will be longer than that before consumers will get a chance to buy the new Cosmic Crisp in the store.

EVANS: This is the issue with the tree fruit. You've got to grow the tree before you get fruit. So we can do as much as we can to try and get the numbers of trees out there and our growers are exceptionally good at growing their trees fast and well but still you have to have some structure there in order to get some crops.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.