Cosmic Crisp Drawing

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

MOYER: We have a strategy to equitably distribute what initially will be a limited number of trees.

Jim Moyer with WSU’s Agricultural Research Center talking about the recent lottery drawing for the first WA-38 or Cosmic Crisp apples. The lottery was the fair way to distribute the initial 300-thousand trees.

MOYER: To put that into context I think the conventional wisdom is that it takes about a million to make a market and we think we’ll be there in a couple of years after that. We came up with the drawing system. The way the drawing worked out it’s pretty well equitably distributed not only in the number of growers but also geographically it’s pretty evenly distributed.

Moyer talks a little about what is making the Cosmic Crisp so exciting for producers.

MOYER: The apple has some very unique characteristics. It’s a Honey Crisp type. It has that tart, sweet taste and it’s crisp. In comparison’s head to head with Honey Crisp at harvest time they’re about even. In terms of their consumer appeal in trials that have been conducted. But as it goes into storage the Cosmic Crisp stores just perfectly. The second thing; when you slice it open it doesn’t turn brown nearly as fast as the traditional apples. It’ll sit out on the table for several hours before it turns brown.

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