Cosmic Crisp Apple

Cosmic Crisp Apple. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

WA38 is now Cosmic Crisp. WSU’s Kate Evans talks about how the new name for the new apple came about.

EVANS: We had a number of consumer focus groups that were run by Carolyn Ross who is an associate professor in food science at WSU. We ran the consumer focus groups in one of two different places around the state and I think it was the Seattle group that originally came up with the idea of bringing something kind of cosmic into the name.They were sort of inspired by the appearance of the apple. It’s a sort of dark red apple and has an almost star-like little blowy white lenticels.

Evans says this will truly be a Washington State apple.

EVANS: It’s an apple that has been bred and selected specifically for the growing conditions here unlike any other apple rally that’s out there. So that was the basis of the WSU breeding program was that we bred and selected apples that would grow well here and were available for Washington growers. Really I guess that’s the big thing but what make this one extra special - everybody who has tried it throughout the testing, the evaluation has been really impressed with the eating quality of the fruit.

And another big plus is it’s storability.

EVANS: So in other words it stores particularly well and it eats really, really nicely off the tree but also right away into the summer, so after it was picked the previous September/October.

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