4/1/2023 0 Comments Cosmic crisp apples![]() ![]() Consumers didn’t know any other apple, and growers didn’t want to spend money and time - $70,000 per acre, decades waiting for saplings to fully mature - investing in another variety.īarritt sympathized with these concerns, but didn’t agree with putting growers before consumers, particularly with an “inefficient” Red Delicious. It was a safe investment for everyone, growers told Barritt. One of the few commercial apples grown in America, the Red Delicious had a monopoly on tree branches and grocery shelves. Dozens and dozens.”īarritt might as well have visited only one. So I started by spending a year visiting every orchard I could. “They told me to do ‘horticultural research to help the industry,’” Barritt said. Then in 1985, he moved three hours west to the university’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee, where research opportunities revealed the stagnant state of America’s apples. For over a decade, he worked at Washington State University, conducting general research on all fruit. in pomology, the science of fruit growing and breeding. In 1969, Barritt graduated from Cornell University with a Ph.D. He saw the growth and production of new apple and cherry varieties, and was inspired to pursue apple research. Both his father and grandfather were gardeners, and Barritt grew up with “two green thumbs,” he said, but didn’t know how to use them until a college internship in the nearby Okanagan Valley. The Cosmic Crisp story began decades ago in Kelowna, British Columbia, where Barritt was born and lives today. The Cosmic Crisp’s “fabulous taste,” long storage life and popularity in Washington orchards - where two-thirds of America’s apples are grown - means “it will be one of the next big apples” for years to come, Bair said. It’s bolstered by household names like Red Delicious (which made its commercial debut in 1874), Gala (1965) and Fuji (1962), and a wave of emerging stars: Honeycrisp (1991), Snapdragon (2013) and more.īut the market is preparing for a new top variety, said Jim Bair, president and CEO of USApple, the regulating body of the United States’ apple industry. ![]() “It’s a Tesla amongst old Chevrolets,” he said.įrom breeding and growing to marketing and selling, the American apple industry is valued at $20 billion. The trademarked, Washington-bred “Cosmic Crisp” that Barritt shows now achieves this feat and more. “So, that’s crispness,” he says.Ĭrisp, firm, juicy, sweet, tart: They’re the “big five” characteristics the now-retired fruit breeder spent 40 years attempting to pack into a single, baseball-sized, 100-calorie apple. ![]() Barritt wipes his mouth with a bony hand, juices still dribbling down his chin, and recedes again from his close-up. The 78-year-old, sinking his teeth into an object he calls his “child,” is showing off decades of his work: a crimson apple, its skin speckled with white dots resembling the cosmos, freshly removed from Barritt’s kitchen freezer after a 10-month stay - around the average time an apple is stored before hitting grocery shelves. “Yes? You heard a crack?” Bruce Barritt asks, backing away from his screen and spitting a mouthful of white, juicy flesh off-camera. "It looks really nice - it's a very pretty apple.“Did you hear it?” The Zoom call eclipses into an all-crimson canvas and resounds a noisy crescendo - something akin to striking thunder, or an ice cube splintering. "Enterprise was chosen really because of its appearance," Evans said on the podcast Sporkful (via Smithsonian Magazine). The Honeycrisp gave the apple crispness with a sweet flavor, and the Enterprise gave it a longer shelf life, as well as its gorgeous color. In 1997, they began by taking the best parts of Honeycrisp and Enterprise apples. The best alternative Washington farmers could see was to develop their own variety (via America's Test Kitchen).īruce Barritt, a horticulturist, and Kate Evans, a pome fruit breeder, decided to create an apple that was crisp while still firm and juicy. Honeycrisp apples quickly became popular, but to grow them, farmers in Washington had to get licensing or a membership to a grower's club, both of which were expensive. Then, in 1991, the Honeycrisp apple was released by the University of Minnesota. Their main variety was Red Delicious, but in the 1990s, Washington started losing market share for their apples to other varieties, such as Fuji and Gala. The Cosmic Crisp apple is a variety that was developed in Washington State, which is the largest producer of apples in the U.S. ![]()
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