![]() What does the zenith of industrial agriculture taste like? For comparison's sake, I tasted the Cosmic Crisp alongside four other modern industrial apple breeds: Gala, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, and the (unenviably named) Envy. More important than the production process, of course, is the taste. The Cosmic Crisp may well be too big to fail the collective investment guarantees it. The Cosmic Crisp, red and flecked, sat quietly among them.Įven if sales of the Cosmic Crisp are tepid this winter, it is probable that we will see the apple on store shelves for years, possibly even decades. There were a number of apple bins, indistinct aside from signage. When I finally spotted one - at a Trader Joe’s in southern California on December 17 - it was unceremonious. I was generally met with blank stares it would seem consumers were not hotly anticipating the apple’s launch as they might an Apple product launch, despite the comparatively huge investment in the apple’s fortunes. ![]() Knowing that they would arrive this fall, I began, back in September, inquiring to grocery store clerks as to their arrival. The entire production process is as intricate and involved as any tech-infused consumer commodity, like a smartwatch or laptop. In short, the Cosmic Crisp apple - the investment, the marketing, the focus groups, and the vast industrial apparatus that crafted it - is a techno-capitalist triumph. Instagram influencers were hired to help hype its release, including a retired astronaut. To extend the selling season, producers store the apple in a refrigerated, controlled atmosphere of 1% carbon dioxide and 2% oxygen after treating it with fungicides. ![]() The apple was so widely believed to be "the apple of the future" (as the New York Times put it) that 13 million trees were grown at a cost of $500 million. As with many modern seeds, Washington State owns the rights, and thus growers must pay royalties in exchange for growing it. (Supposedly, the Cosmic Crisp will last around a year in cold storage.) A consulting firm tested the apple with focus groups, where one participant commented on the apple’s dotted lenticels as star-like, which led to the name. The Cosmic Crisp, then known as WA 38, ticked all the boxes: its ability to survive in all of Washington state's microclimates, its taste and texture, and how long it would store without decaying. A Darwinian tasting process brought the Cosmic Crisp into being: in the late 1990s, Bruce Barrett, an apple researcher at Washington State University, picked the Cosmic Crisp out of 10,000 crossbreeds. The phrase “apple farmer” inspires images of pastoral orchards and straw hats yet modern agriculture practices fall far from that imagined tree. In other words, one would not know immediately that this humble fruit is the pinnacle of industrial agriculture - encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, two decades of planning, and hundreds of trees bred, tasted, and culled. ![]() "It looks really nice - it's a very pretty apple.Upon first glance, the Cosmic Crisp apple doesn't appear particularly unique. It is larger than the average apple, certainly, but its mottled exterior could be confused for many other reddish varietals. "Enterprise was chosen really because of its appearance," Evans said on the podcast Sporkful (via Smithsonian Magazine). The Honeycrisp gave the apple crispness with a sweet flavor, and the Enterprise gave it a longer shelf life, as well as its gorgeous color. In 1997, they began by taking the best parts of Honeycrisp and Enterprise apples. The best alternative Washington farmers could see was to develop their own variety (via America's Test Kitchen).īruce Barritt, a horticulturist, and Kate Evans, a pome fruit breeder, decided to create an apple that was crisp while still firm and juicy. Honeycrisp apples quickly became popular, but to grow them, farmers in Washington had to get licensing or a membership to a grower's club, both of which were expensive. Then, in 1991, the Honeycrisp apple was released by the University of Minnesota. Their main variety was Red Delicious, but in the 1990s, Washington started losing market share for their apples to other varieties, such as Fuji and Gala. The Cosmic Crisp apple is a variety that was developed in Washington State, which is the largest producer of apples in the U.S.
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