premise: Tickled pink In 1973, the Australian fruit breeder John Cripps created a new variety of apple tree by crossing a red Australian Lady Williams variety with a pale-green American Golden Delicious. The offspring first fruited in 1979 and combined the best features of its parents in an apple that had an attractive pink hue on a yellow undertone. The new, improved apple was named the Cripps Pink after its inventor. Today the Cripps Pink is one of the most popular varieties of apple and is grown extensively in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and in California and Washington in the USA. By switching from northern hemisphere fruit to southern hemisphere fruit the apple is available at its seasonal best all year round. The highest-quality apples are marketed worldwide under the trademark Pink LadyTM. To preserve the premium price and appeal of the Pink Lady, apples that fail to meet the highest standards are sold under the name Cripps PinkTM. These standards are based on colour and flavour, in particular, the extent of the pink coverage and the sugar/acid balance. Consumers who buy a Pink Lady apple are ensured a product that is of consistently high quality. To earn the name Pink Lady the skin of a Cripps Pink apple must be at least 40% pink. Strong sunlight increases the pink coloration and it may be necessary to remove the uppermost leaves of a tree to let the light through. The extra work required to cultivate Cripps Pink trees is offset by its advantages, which include: vigorous trees; fruit that has tolerance to sunburn; a thin skin that does not crack; flesh that is resistant to browning after being cut and exposed to air; a cold-storage life of up to six months and a retail shelf-life of about four weeks. However, the main advantage for apple growers is the premium price that the Pink Lady brand is able to command. The Cripps Red variety, also known as Cripps II, is related to the Pink Lady and was developed at the same time. The premium grade is marketed as the Sun downerTM. Unlike the genuinely pink Pink Lady, the SundownerTM is a classic bi- coloured apple, with a skin that is 45% red from Lady Williams and 55% green from Golden Delicious. Apples that fall outside of this colour ratio are rejected at the packing station and used for juice, whilst the smaller apples are retained for the home market. The Sundowner is harvested after Cripps Pink in late May or early June, and a few weeks before Lady Williams. It has better cold-storage properties than Cripps Pink and it retains an excellent shelf life. Cripps Red apples have a coarser texture than Cripps Pink, are less sweet and have a stronger flavour. Both apples are sweeter than Lady Williams but neither is as sweet as Golden Delicious. The advantage of the Pink LadyTM brand is that it is a trademark of a premium product, not just a Cripps Pink apple. This means that new and improved strains of the Cripps Pink can use the Pink Lady brand name as long as they meet the minimum quality requirement of being 40% pink. Three such strains are the Rosy Glow, The Ruby Pink and the Lady in Red. The Rosy Glow apple was discovered in an orchard of Cripps Pink trees that had been planted in South Australia in 1996. One limb of a Cripps Pink tree had red-coloured apples while the rest of the limbs bore mostly green fruit. A bud was taken from the mutated branch and grafted onto rootstock to produce the new variety. The fruit from the new Rosy Glow tree was the same colour over the entire tree and a patent for this unique apple was granted in 2003. The Rosy Glow apple benefits from a larger area of pink than the Pink Lady and it ripens earlier in the season in climates that have less hours of sunshine. As a consequence, the Cripps Pink is likely to be phased out in favour of the Rosy Glow, with the apples branded as Pink LadyTM if they have 40% or more pink coverage. Ruby Pink and Lady in Red are two mutations of the Cripps Pink that were dis covered in New Zealand. Like the Rosy Glow, these improved varieties develop a larger area of pink than the Cripps Pink, which allows more apples to meet the quality requirements of the Pink LadyTM brand. Planting of these trees may need to be controlled otherwise the supply of Pink Lady apples will exceed the demand, to then threaten the price premium. Overproduction apart, the future of what has become possibly the worlds best-known modern apple and fruit brand, looks secure.
hypothesis: One advantage of Cripps Pink trees is that they grow well.