Washington State University’s WA 2 apple will be marketed as Sunrise Magic®, the university announced today. This is a re-launch of the apple, this time in partnership with Proprietary Variety Management. The goal is to give a more effective push to the variety, using consumer research and other techniques. The variety is a cross between Splendor and Gala.
Many breeders around the world have been trying for years to develop apples with sweet red flesh, pigmented, like red apple skin, with antioxidant-rich chemicals called anthocyanins. Such varieties would be novel and attractive, the breeders hope, and could be touted for their reputed health benefits.
Bill Howell, a plant pathologist in Prosser, Benton County, about a two-hour drive south of Rock Island and Wenatchee, the epicenter of Washington’s apple industry, has produced several hybrids of Honeycrisp and older, red-fleshed varieties that are — cue the trumpets — sweet and crunchy, with a distinctive cherry-berry flavor.
Crunch Time Apple Growers’ SnapDragon apples have ended their season with retail partners selling out of the last of the 2016 harvest. Crunch Time’s marketing plan focused on raising consumer awareness of SnapDragon by making it available for consumers to taste.
Consumers will have a bigger bite of New York’s Crunch Time apples in 2018-19. Volumes are increasing for the grower-owned organization’s SnapDragon and RubyFrost varieties, grown exclusively in New York. Combined production for the two varieties could increase about 30% this year.
Names have been given to two new apple varieties formerly called New York 1 and New York 2. The names are SnapDragon and RubyFrost.
The announcement came with promotional materials—logos for both SnapDragon and RubyFrost. Snapdragon’s logo is a stylized dragon curled into an S shape with its name and the words Monster Crunch below it. The name RubyFrost appears in red below a blue stylized snowflake and over the words Cool, Crisp, Craveable.
