10 Dec 2019 Cross-bred Cosmic Crunch apples can stay fresh for a whole year

Move over Granny Smith and Red Delicious, there’s a hot new apple in town and it’s built to outlast them all – the Cosmic Crunch apple has just hit shelves across the US.

Through careful development across two decades, the new variety is promised to offer an extra juicy and crispy experience, with a storage life of up to 12 months when kept in the right conditions.

The bi-colour Cosmic Crunch is so named for the white speckles that dot its skin, and is the result of a cross-breeding research at Washington State University, where scientists began working on a hybrid fruit based on the Enterprise and Honeycrisp apples in 1997.

Now patented, the resulting Cosmic Crunch apple is said to be large, juicy and remarkably firm with a crisp texture. It also offers naturally heightened levels of acidity and sugar, so will very much be on the sweeter side. So much so, the team says it can allow home bakers to rely less on added sugar for their recipes.

The shelf life is billed as exceptional. In addition to high resistance to bruising, the Cosmic Crunch apple can be kept in controlled atmosphere storage for 12 months, in a fridge for six months or longer and on the shelf at room temperature for several weeks.

According to the researchers, this is because the Cosmic Crunch exhibits none of the typical storage disorders that plague lesser apples, such as internal browning, chilling injuries, shrivelling or a sensitivity to carbon dioxide and low oxygen.

Source: NewAtlas.com

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