News on Youtube Nov 24 2018

Nothing quite satisfies like a good apple.

Firm and juicy with the right amount of tartness and

sweetness.

(Bruce Barritt) Once you bite into it then you pull it out you

break it you crack it.

And when it cracks that's crispness, you want that.

And if you have to go and wipe your face after it's over that's

good.

>>Retired horticulturist Bruce Barritt and his successor Kate

Evans have something in common, the Cosmic Crisp apple.

Bruce, since joining the horticulture program at

Washington State University in 1969, lobbied for funding from

both the University and the Washington apple industry in

1994, for an apple-breeding program.

What transpired was a first ever in the state, a means of

propagating new varieties of apples destined for the

commercial markets.

From a cross between the Honey Crisp apple and the Enterprise

apple, Bruce's happenstance created a new variety, the WA38,

Destined in some circles as being a game changer.

The WA 38 subsequently picked up a new moniker born from

consumers, as the Cosmic Crisp, said to be named for its

remarkable facsimile of cosmic stars over a sea of red.

(Barritt) We didn't start the breeding program until we had

the industry on board and the industry and in that sense is

the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission which is the

industry taxing itself on the basis of fruit sold taxing

itself to pay for research.

Cosmic Crisp was from a hybridization that was made in

1997.

The techniques used are fairly standard you take of pollen from

one variety and put it on the stigma of another variety and

you get the seed.

The seeds produced from that cross were planted in the

orchard and evaluated and in the end we ended up with Cosmic

crisp.

Every apple variety starts with a seed, then it produces a tree

and if you like the tree you propagate it vegetatively in the

nursery using budding or grafting, so from that original

tree every tree that's out there 6 million were planted this year

all come originally from about that source.

>>In 2008, Kate Evans took over where Bruce left off, and now

runs the pome fruit breeding program at WSU.

(Kate Evans) Probably over the last 30 to 40 years as a new

variety goes out to the industry it goes out into some kind of

exclusive licensing agreement to just perhaps one producer group

one Warehouse Group.

We chose not to do that really because we we needed to make our

varieties available to all all Washington growers.

>>A built in advantage for growers of the Cosmic Crisp,

state growers will have a 10 year exclusive on the

licensing and growing in North America.

With the help of Proprietary Variety management,

PVM, a commercialization company out of Yakima, WSU will likely

have patents internationally on a unique variety of apple that

could be a huge win for the state.

(Kathryn Grandy) A lot of its been new for everyone.

This is a large endeavor.

First time the industry has collaborated together on growing

the same cultivar.

And you know some of it's been educational with the growers and

the marketing company on some of the brand strategies.

There are numerous inquiries every day in anticipation just

consumers around the country that have heard about Cosmic

Crisp and the new Apple coming and where can they buy it.

So you know with our marketing launch.

Our goal is to really build brand awareness.

So when the consumer goes into retail they're asking for a

Cosmic Crisp.

(Evans) What is it about cosmic crisp that makes it so

great?

Well I mean first of all it's a fantastic eat.

It's one of those apples that combines all of those nice

flavorful attributes the sweetness the tautness with the

phenomenal crispness that is fairly rare really in apples.

It's an apple that for this Washington industry that's

producing the volume that it's producing so much of the fruit

is stored.

They want to be able to sell fruit for 12 months of the year.

So here we have an apple that's got excellent eating quality and

it retains that quality throughout a 12-month period.

I think the other thing that has worked particularly in this

Apple's favor is that from a grower perspective it's

harvesting at about the same time as Red Delicious.

And there have been many growers in Washington who've been

looking for quite some time for a variety that they can use to

to replace Red Delicious in their kind of portfolio

varieties when they're when they're planning their harvest

when they've got that labor force they need to make sure

that they've got a steady supply of work to keep that picking

crew going through the season.

So if you're going to pull out a variety you need to find

something else that's going to fit that harvest window.

>>Stemilt Growers, a Wenatchee family business that stretch's

back over a hundred years...is in a unique position as both

grower and processor to evaluate the huge influx of the new

variety of apple into the commercial marketplace.

(Tate Mathison) As a grower, Cosmic Crisp Is a pretty

interesting endeavor for us It's developed here in Washington and

really developed in a way that it's good to maximize the

attributes of the Northwest.

It's probably one of my favorite apples to eat.

It yields wonderfully; it handles the picking and packing

and selling process really really well.

So even though we've not handled a crop yet.

I'm pretty excited that this will do very very well in the

marketplace.

An Opportunity like Cosmic Crisp doesn't come around very often.

You can go decades without an apple variety having an

impact of the marketplace. Cosmic Crisp

is kind of a once in a generation event for the

Northwest for sure.

(Bruce Barritt) Every breeder has to be optimistic has to

think that they are going to build and produce something

important if you do your job well and you get some luck

because there is there is luck involved but you also make some

good decisions along the line like picking the parents.

It was developed to make the consumer happy, that's it.