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NewVarieties Bill Pitts, the nursery manager of Wafler, said that about 160,000 to 180,000 trees should be available for planting in the spring of 2012, and additional trees will come as part of a three- or four-year plan. Geneva root- stocks of about the same size were limited in availability, he said, so only a few were grafted to these new root- stocks. Also, he said, he was reluctant to graft very many trees of new varieties onto rootstocks that were also relatively new. Pitts also noted that several New York growers have their own nurseries and will be producing their own trees. There has been some limit on availability of budwood, which needed to be bulked up before more trees could be produced. Growers had an opportunity to test some trees before they were released. “Some trees from the very early trials are now five or six years old,” Crist said. “There are a few thousand of those trees spread around,” so some consumers get to taste them at direct farm markets. Marketing work Just as other Cornell horticulturists like Dr. Terence Robinson are studying the new varieties to help growers refine techniques for growing them, and Dr. Chris Watkins is developing protocols for storing them, Crist said the marketing folks at Cornell are working to help set the stage as well. Dr. Miguel Gomez, assistant professor in the Charles H. Dyson School for Applied Economics and Manage- ment at Cornell University, is working closely with New York Apple Growers, as are two of his colleagues. Gomez is supervising a summer intern, Krista Call, paid by NYAG, who will gather basic information that marketers would need to know when launching new apples. She will provide the information to Cornell stu- dents who will be taking a fall semester class from senior lecturer Dr. Debra Perosio at the Dyson School. Perosio has taken on the new apples as the subject for her class, Marketing Plan Development. “The class allows students to apply their skills to a real- world business situation,” she said. Eighteen four-person teams will each develop a marketing plan for the apples and present their findings at a Sunday afternoon show- case near Thanksgiving. The apple growers are invited to hear 18 three-minute pitches and will receive, free of charge, 18 papers explaining each team’s marketing plan in detail. The students analyze the apple business, study com- petitors as diverse as other apples to junk food snacks, and come up with a plan to market the apples—what should their names be, what stores should sell them, what audiences should be targeted, what prices should they sell at, and how should they be promoted. “While this is a sophomore-level course and not done by students at the MBA level, they will present a lot of really good ideas,” Perosio said. “In addition, the ideas come from a younger cohort of people.” Dr. Bradley Rickard, an assistant professor in the Dyson School and director of the Horticultural Business and Policy Program, has conducted consumer surveys of the kind of names people respond to. “Sensory names”—like Honeycrisp, SweeTango—that describe taste or texture have greater appeal than “appearance names”—like Red Delicious, Golden Deli- cious, or Red Rome, he said. And the poorest names are “namesake names,” like Empire, Cortland, or McIntosh. “This is not a charted course,” Jeff Crist said. “We want to explore all the available options.” As the prospectus says, “The mission of NYAG is to manage the release of new advanced apple varieties and market these varieties at an accelerated pace that delivers profit and long-term sustainability to our members and licensing partners and to overwhelm our fresh apple con- sumers with a positive fresh apple eating experience.” • www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JUNE 2011 23