Published 2:30 pm Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Washington State University’s new apple star has an official brand name — Sunflare.
WSU apple breeder Kate Evans announced the new name for WA 64 on Dec. 10 at the Northwest Horticulture Expo in Yakima, Wash.
“Our breeding program exists to give consumers better apples to eat and Sunflare checks all our boxes,” Evans said in a news release.
Sunflare has a sweet and tart, balanced and complex flavor. The crunchy and juicy fruit has a pink blush over a yellow background when ripe.
The new apple is a cross of Honeycrisp and Cripps Pink, which is better known under the trademark name Pink Lady.
It has outstanding firmness and flavor in storage, which should make it attractive to both growers and shoppers in supermarkets.
Sunflare will be available in grocery stores in 2029.
The name Sunflare came out of a contest that drew more than 15,000 entries.
Sunflare won in part by best reflecting the apple’s appearance.
“These pinks, oranges and yellows stand out against all the red apples on the shelf,” said Jeremy Tamsen, director of the WSU Office of Commercialization.
The winning entry came from Ryan Escarcega, a 49-year-old food service salesperson and chef from Centralia, Wash.
He was inspired by the apple variety’s bright colors as well as the powerful solar storms that made northern lights sparkle across North America this spring.
“I looked at the picture of the apple for a long time, fantasizing what it was going to taste like,” Escarcega said in a news release.
“It was a real eye-catcher. I saw a nice relationship between the colors and the name. And the sun has everything to do with the growth of the product,” he added.
As a student at the Seattle Culinary Academy more than a decade ago, Escarcega was part of a focus group that helped name the Envy apple.
For his winning entry, he received a box of Sunflare apples and other WSU-themed prizes, including a can of Cougar Gold cheese.
Sunflare is the third apple to emerge from the WSU program, which most recently launched Cosmic Crisp in 2019.
USApple projected Cosmic Crisp to rank eighth in production for the 2024-25 season with 16.3 million bushels — all from Washington growers. That accounted for 5.3% of the nation’s projected apple production.
Scientists first bred Sunflare in 1998 when they hand-pollinated a Honeycrisp flower with pollen from a Cripps Pink tree at WSU’s Columbia View Research Orchard near Orondo, Wash.
“We do what the bees do. ‘Sunflare resulted from pollination. It’s not engineered or modified in any way,” said retired apple breeder Bruce Barritt, who launched the breeding program in 1994.
There’s an element of chance to every cross combination, and apple breeders test thousands of trees in search of one stellar variety.
WSU holds a patent on WA 64 and has filed trademark applications for the Sunflare brand name.
The university selected International New-Varieties Network LLC to manage sales of licensed WA 64 trees to budwood growers and has organized an advisory committee of marketing company representatives to license and market the variety to grocers.
This committee will develop a trademarked logo, color palette and brand look and feel.
WSU scientists continue to study and share recommendations on the best ways to grow WA 64.
Royalties from sales of the trees, budwood and eventually the fruit itself will help support research and future apple varieties at WSU.
Entering 2024, Cosmic Crisp had brought in $6 million in royalties, Tamsen said, in a previous interview.
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