WSU Insider
The apple that changed Pullman's economy is finally in your grocery store
The Cosmic Crisp® didn't just show up in the produce aisle. It took Washington State University researchers decades to get it there, and now the apple that helped change Pullman's economic fortunes is sitting in your grocery store like it's no big deal. It is a big deal. This is the apple that was literally bred to be the apple: firm, sweet, slow to brown, and built to last in storage without turning into sad mush by Thanksgiving. That kind of work doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen without a land-grant university digging into the messy, unglamorous business of agriculture. Pullman has always been a farm town at heart, and the Cosmic Crisp is proof that the Palouse isn't just wheat fields and wind. It's where the future of the orchard industry got planted, one cross-pollination at a time. The economic impact is the part worth sitting up for. This isn't a novelty apple for fancy grocery stores. It's a crop that was designed to give Washington growers a new revenue stream, one that could compete with the big names and keep money flowing into the state's rural communities. You don't have to be a farmer to feel that. You just have to live here. It's the same kind of groundwork that built the state's wine industry, the one Cougs helped grow one vineyard at a time.
