YAKIMA, Wash. — The countdown to takeoff for Cosmic Crisp has begun.
Though commercial planting of trees won’t begin until next year and the apple be available to consumers until 2020, shipments of the variety could approach 5 million cartons by 2022.
Cristy Warnock, operations manager at Proprietary Variety Management, Yakima, said there were initial thoughts that only about 450,000 trees would be available for planting in 2017, but that amount was increased to 700,000 trees because of more trees were propagated than first thought.
A drawing was conducted to portion out available trees to interested growers in Washington growers. Those trees will be delivered next spring, she said.
Article by Tom Karst, The Packer
