PULLMAN — Washington State University is getting ready to launch a competition to name its new apple variety, currently known as WA 64.
Jeremy Tamsen, director of innovation and commercialization for the WSU College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Resource Sciences, said a website for people to enter a name for the apple will be live by the end of the month. Tamsen said the exact date of the website launch is not determined yet.
He said the first commercial sale of the trees will happen in 2026, and the first harvest of the apple to the market is expected in 2029.
In the meantime, Tamsen said the competition will keep the excitement going and allow the public to interact with the process of the commercialization of the apple.
"We're trying to give people a stake in the new name, get people a reason to be interested in the apple before it's available," Tamsen said.
During the Northwest Horticulture Expo in Kennewick in December, the apple was sampled to attendees and name ideas were taken by the public. Tamsen said WSU teams also will be at events throughout the state to gather name ideas during the competition.
Tamsen said having the public provide name suggestions is a new approach to naming a new apple variety from WSU.
"We really do hope the name can be related to WSU or Washington culture in some way. Perhaps we will get a name suggestion that is in Native American cultural languages. We're really open to many ideas about this," Tamsen said.
When the Cosmic Crisp was released to the market in 2019, Tamsen said WSU hired a marketing firm to help develop the name. But he said he hopes to find a "unique and distinctive" name for the new apple from the public.
He said the name Cosmic Crisp is unique, distinctive, short, and memorable. The word cosmic derives from the star-shaped pores on the outside of the apple with a red background, and the word cosmic is not very associated with fruit, making it unique, Tamsen said.
The attributes of WA 64 are crunchiness, a well-retained firmness in storage, a pink blush and a yellow background, according to Tamsen. It's a Honeycrisp crossed with Pink Lady apple.
The final date to submit a name suggestions is not finalized, Tamsen said. It will be communicated when the website goes live. But once the name entry phase is done, a short list of names will go through focus group testing. The focus group testing will uncover any potential negative associations people may have with that name.
Tamsen said it is possible the winning name won't exactly be the same as it was entered, but it could be a mutation to make it better.
But there will still be a winner with prizes. Tamsen said the winner could receive boxes of the new apple and/or other apple-related gifts.
"People are really creative and can maybe think of things we couldn't think of even with help, like a marketing agency," Tamsen said.
One thing Tamsen and his department are doing to boost the appeal of the apple is making it exclusive to Washington. He said the apples grown in Washington state will be the only WA 64 apples allowed in the U.S. domestic market. If other WA 64 apples are grown outside of the state, they are exported to international markets.
Tamsen said the same was done for the Cosmic Crisp for its first 10 years and he recently extended that requirement for another 10.
He said the Washington grown policy appeals to apple growers in Washington and it is a "point of pride" for them.
Tamsen said WSU can create those requirements because the apple growers paid for the research through the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission that allowed WSU to create both apples.
