QUINCY — A sea of 2-foot-tall trees, brown leaves still hanging on, ride above a blanket of snow.
They look normal enough but it’s rootstock growth, in a field owned by Gold Crown Nursery. In another month they will be cut off six to eight inches above the ground, just above single buds that were grafted into the stems in August.
In spring, the buds will burst forth, growing new nursery trees through summer. They’ll be ready for digging in November, placed in cold storage through winter and shipped for planting in the spring of 2017.
What makes these trees special are that they will be the first commercial planting of Cosmic Crisp, the first apple variety bred in Washington to be exclusively grown by any and all Washington growers. The industry hopes Cosmic Crisp will become the new Washington apple. The first apples will be harvested and sold in stores in the fall of 2020.
Initially known by its breeding name, WA 38, the apple was bred from Enterprise and Honeycrisp in 1997 by Bruce Barritt, who was then the apple breeder at Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee.
Cosmic Crisp has a sweet, tangy flavor and ranks high in taste, texture and beauty and has many qualities of the popular Honeycrisp with fewer horticultural challenges, says Kate Evans, who succeeded Barritt after his retirement.
Twenty-four growers were chosen by drawing to plant the first 300,000 to 400,000 commercial Cosmic Crisp in 2017. But propagation is going well enough that 600,000 will be ready, so a second set of 24 growers also will receive trees, said Bill Howell, managing director of Northwest Nursery Improvement Institute, Prosser. The institute is managing tree production by seven nurseries. Growers are evenly split into two classifications: smaller growers wanting 3,000 to 5,000 trees and larger ones receiving up to 20,000.
In 2018, nurseries will have enough Cosmic Crisp that the drawing won’t be used and any Washington grower will be able to buy them at nurseries.
“We have orders for well over 1 million trees for 2018 and orders are coming now pretty aggressively for 2019,” said Lynnell Brandt, president of Proprietary Variety Management in Yakima, which is coordinating the commercialization of Cosmic Crisp for WSU.
All growers, packers and marketers in the state will be able to handle the new variety under grade and packing standards and by license or contract with the management firm on behalf of WSU instead of through a federal marketing order, Brandt said. Countries outside North America will be licensed within the next few years and eventually licenses may be granted in other states, he said.
“This variety is exclusive to Washington state, so it’s been easy and exciting to bring an entire marketing group together to advise on how to do it correctly,” Brandt said.
All major marketing firms, used to working independently as competitors, are coming together on an advisory committee to launch Cosmic Crisp in the best way possible, Brandt said.
The committee is headed by Robert Kershaw, president of Domex Superfresh Growers in Yakima. Meetings are open to all marketers in the state and a subcommittee will define quality standards. Other committees will be established as needed, Brandt said.
“We want to be on top of it as critical mass won’t be the challenge. The challenge will be to be ahead of marketing curves and growing techniques and storage and so forth,” he said.
“This is a unique commercialization because it involves the entire industry. Potentially, it could set a new bar in release of new materials in a coordinated manner,” Brandt said.
Proprietary has established a protocol, vetted by WSU and the institute, for growers to obtain scion wood to graft their own Cosmic Crisp onto rootstock as soon as enough scion is available, Brandt said. It’s a way to accelerate production and can be less expensive than buying finished trees, depending on orchard establishment and density, he said.
Brandt’s nursery, Brandt’s Fruit Trees, Yakima, is one of the nurseries propagating Cosmic Crisp. Others are: Cameron, Eltopia; ProTree, Moses Lake; Willow Drive, Ephrata; Van Well, East Wenatchee; Gold Crown, Wenatchee; and C&O, Wenatchee.
Gold Star Nursery in Moxee has a one-time propagation agreement to produce Cosmic Crisp for its own orchards, Howell said.
“It’s kind of a different situation to have the marketers working together,” said Pete Van Well, president of Van Well Nursery.
Van Well is growing 80,000 Cosmic Crisp trees at 10,000 per acre near Moses Lake. They will be planted in orchards at 1,000 to 2,000 per acre.
At Quincy, Gold Crown is growing about the same amount.
“It’s an exciting new apple that has a strong future,” said Lori Goldy, wife of co-owner Dale Goldy.
