THE COMING OF THE COSMIC CRISP

I just bought an Apple Macbook Air.  My older one was seven years old.

But this posting has nothing to do with Apple products.  I'm focusing on the edible kind.  An apple currently is my most important fruit.  When I walk on a golf course, one apple is my entire lunch.  Unfortunately, I have no choice of which variety, for I just take what 15 Craigside provides.

Turns out that an apple a day does keep the doctor away.  But you've got to eat the peel.

Red Delicious was the best seller in the U.S. for half a century, until last year, when Gala finally reached the top, with Granny Smith at #3 and Fuji #4.  That list was based on boxes (42 pounds) sold.  However, here is another tally of most popular apples in the USA:

Note that cost is a factor, for Red Delicious is the cheapest of the lot, while Gala (left) is the third least costly.  Like wine, Gala has a floral aroma with hints of vanilla.  Supposedly not good for baking.  The traditional green Granny Smith is the go-to apple for pies, but some say Jonagold and Honeycrisp are better.  The Gala apple was first noticed in New Zealand in 1934, but did not arrive in the U.S. until the 1970's.  It is a cross between Golden Delicious and Kidd's Orange Red apples.


The Red Delicious originated in an Iowa orchard as a reddish yellow fruit called Hawkeye.  Around the same time, the Golden Delicious from West Virginia became popular.  This becomes somewhat confusing, but in 1914, that Hawkeye was renamed Red Delicious and became mostly red.  In the 1980's Red Delicious represented 75% of the Washington State harvest.

Ever chomp into a Honeycrisp apple (right)?  I don't remember even hearing of that variety.  Developed by the University of Minnesota, the grandparents include Duchess of Oldenburg and Golden Delicious apples, and is now the state fruit.  Here is something interesting.  Honeycrisp flowers are self-sterile, meaning that a tree grown from the seed of this apple will be a hybrid of Honeycrisp and the pollenizing variety, which could well  be a sour tasting crabapple.

I wonder if Johnny Appleseed was aware of this defect.  And, by the way, he indeed had a rewarding life journey of planting apple trees.  He was born in Massachusetts in 1774 as John Chapman.

The story of the Fuji apple, the best seller in Japan, is worthy of re-telling.  Just before World War II, the Tohoku Research Station crossed two American apples--Red Delicious and Virginia Ralls Genet--and voila, got Fuji, so named because it was developed in the town of Fujisaki.  It took until 1962 to bring this apple to market.  Half the Fuji's in Japan now come from Aomori. 

70% of apples grown in China (#1 producer in the world) are Fuji, which only ranks #4 in the USA (#2 in the world).  This apple was introduced into the U.S. market in the 1980's.  More than half of all apples in the U.S. are grown in the state of Washington, with New York #2 and Michigan #3.

Various factors make an apple popular, and sugar content is one:

• Fuji                                      16%-18%
• Red and Golden Delicious  11%-15%
• Granny Smith                      12%-18%
• Gala                                     14%-16%

However, keep in mind that two small apples or one large apple has as much sugar as a Snickers bar!

Apple acreage has been shrinking for a long time.  No one quite remembers, however, that from 1996 to 1998, apple growers lost $760 million, so Congress passed a bill to bail out the industry.  We keep reading about the same happening to the auto industry, but in this period, Congress provided $23 billion to American farmers.

So what can we expect in the future?  The COSMIC CRISP.  In 1994 Washington State University began a breeding program to find a better apple.  Variety WA38 came to the top, with a starry pattern.  To quote developer Bruce Barritt (left):

It’s when you get your teeth into the apple and you try to pull away and hear a cracking sound–an acoustic characteristic,” he says, describing what makes an ideal apple. Texture and moisture are also key–you want a firm, crisp apple with a juiciness that renders the experience of eating it “very pleasant.

He contends the Cosmic Crisp (CC) is a triple threat, for it has all three qualities.  It is a cross between Honeycrisp and Enterprise.  Under ideal conditions, the CC can be stored for up to a full year, remaining crisp, firm, juicy, sweet and tart.  The price should be about the same as Honeycrisp apples,  which are near the top.  So will people actually pay more for quality?

The first 700,000 trees were only sold in 2017, by lottery.  About 5 million more trees were planted last year.  They hope to sell 200,000 40-pound boxes (which actually hold 42 pounds) this year, increasing to 1.9 million next year and 9 million in 2022.

I can't quite do this at 15 Craigside, but if you have a large yard, you can buy a packet of 50 different apple seeds only for $7:

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Typhoon Hagibis has further weakened into "only" a Category 3, and is on the verge of making landfall Saturday (which is today in Hawaii):

Flights into Haneda and Narita Airports are being stopped. Tokyo Disneyland, DisneySea and Universal Studios will be closed on Saturday (which is Friday in Hawaii).  Rainfall could approach a yard and winds will exceed 100 MPH.  The robust Rugby World Cup contingency plan for typhoons was not robust enough, and games on Honshu have been cancelled.  

Forbes headlined:  The Century's Strongest Super-Typhoon Hagibis is About to Hit Japan.  The cyclonic storm has a diameter of 870 miles, the eye is 55 miles wide and the full moon means that the tidal surge could reach 40 feet.  There will be a direct hit over Tokyo Saturday night.  The center of Tokyo dodged Typhoon Faxai only last month, when 30,000 homes in Chiba were destroyed.  Hagibis in Tagolog means speed.

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