Edible Eight!

Have you filled out your bracket yet? No, not the NCAA one but the US Apple's Apple Madness? Wendy Brannen with US Apple says today is the beginning of the Edible Eight!

BRANNEN: Apple Madness is of course a play on March Madness. It has been so much fun to engage with our members and see them get involved in the program which basically pits 32 of our all-star apple varieties against one another in a bracket style competition.

As I mentioned, they are now down to the Edible Eight and interestingly a lot of tried and true varieties like Red and Golden Delicious were knocked in early competitions.

BRANNEN: We have had incredible on-line response. In fact, Apple Madness has actually received more than 19-thousand votes and still counting so we have a lot of people who are filling out their brackets and voting on their favorite apples. We are seeing some of those newer varieties that are really hanging in there and getting some good votes.

It's easy and fun to vote...I just filled out my bracket.

BRANNEN: To play along people can go to USApple.com/AppleMadness and there you can fill out your brackets and vote for your favorite varieties. It is a lot of fun and we've gotten a lot of good feedback both from our fans online and the folks who follow us on all our social channels and from our members. Everyone likes a good competition.

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