6/24/2023 0 Comments Cosmic crispGrower tree production may be contracted out to a third party nursery outside of NNII.Third – for fruit grower tree production (budding of rootstock liners or bench grafts) when NNII member nurseries are unable to meet demand.Second – for topworking by NNII-contracted WA 38 fruit growers.First – to all NNII nurseries for fall, spring, or bench graft propagations to produce certified trees for subsequent sale by the recipient nursery.Available budwood from the certified NNII member nurseries will be distributed in the following order: I would still happily buy this apple fresh from a farmer's market or even grow it in my yard when they become available, but I won't be buying any more from the grocery store.Grower must obtain a WA 38 grower agreement from the NNII nursery as well as a one-time propagation agreement from NNII. This was my biggest concern with this variety, and what I suspect may be its downfall: they're most likely a delicious, reliable apple when sold fresh off the tree, but since they were specifically bred to have an exceedingly long shelf life, most of what you can find in stores will have been stored for many, many, many months. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the apples I'm seeing in stores now are from the same harvest as the apples I bought last spring. In short, they tasted exactly like an apple that has been sitting in storage for over a year that's lost all of its flavor and appeal. The skin even felt a bit soft and when squeezed the apple seemed slightly spongy and wilted. They tasted completely bland with no tartness, just moderate single-note sweetness, absolutely no complexity, and a texture that was technically still crisp but not at all enchanting. I was extremely disappointed with the apples I got. I bought a few this year (early 2021) when I saw them available again, expecting them to be just as good as last year. I would have still picked a good farmer's market apple over this, but that's not the class these apples fall under. The texture was extremely crisp and juicy as promised, and the flavor was very sweet, very tart, and a tad more complex than the watery storebought apples. It was by far the best-tasting apple that I'd bought from a grocery store in many years, blowing all of the other commercial varieties out of the water. After that tasting, I would have rated it at 5 out of 5 stars, hands down. The first was early in 2020 when this variety first became available. I had two opportunities to taste this apple. More information about the horticultural characteristics of Cosmic Crisp from WSU. WSU recommend late-flowering crab-apple pollinators, and fruit set on Cosmic Crisp is lower than most varieties so thinning of the fruitlets is not usually needed. Like most apple varieties Cosmic Crisp is not self-fertile. Interestingly, when it was first released, Cosmic Crisp was only available to growers in the state of Washington - and although millions of trees have been planted in a very short time in Washington, the idea was to keep Cosmic Crisp as a premium variety. Like many new apple varieties Cosmic Crisp is trademarked and only licensed growers can plant trees. The marketing objective for Cosmic Crisp is clearly to try to achieve the same success that Honeycrisp enjoyed when it first arrived. It was one of thousands of crosses between Enterprise and Honeycrisp - the former known for its storage and disease-resistance, the latter wildly popular in the USA for its crisp crunchy texture. WA38 was developed at Washington State University (WSU) by Bruce Barritt, who led its apple-breeding program in the 1990s. It was introduced to growers in 2016 and first shipments to consumers are expected in 2019. Cosmic Crisp is a new large apple variety, known during its long development period as WA38.
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