A New Apple is on the Horizon: WSU’s ‘Sunflare’ is Set to Hit Stores in 2029

‘Tis the season…for apples! Who can resist the satisfying crunch of a good apple? WSU certainly can’t.  

The newest apple developed by WSU, the Sunflare, combines the crispness of a Honeycrisp with the flavor of a Pink Lady. Its colorful appearance also sets it apart from the varieties currently lining grocery store shelves.   

Although the variety is already being introduced to growers, consumers will have to wait until 2029 for the Sunflare to arrive in grocery stores, according to the WSU Insider.  

WSU first created the Sunflare in 1998 by manually transferring pollen from a Cripps Pink apple tree to a Honeycrisp flower at the university’s Columbia View Research Orchard. This process allowed researchers to combine desirable characteristics from both varieties, including the Honeycrisp’s crisp texture and juiciness and the Cripps Pink’s firmness and flavor.  

Developing a new apple variety takes considerably more than crossing two existing apples. Researchers grow thousands of individual trees from the resulting seeds and evaluate their fruit to identify varieties with desirable qualities. Because each seed produces a genetically different tree, breeders must examine numerous possibilities before finding an apple worth bringing to consumers.  

WSU holds a patent on the Sunflare variety, officially identified as WA 64, and is working with licensing partners to introduce it to commercial growers. Until August 2034, only Washington state growers can be licensed to grow the new variety.  

Revenue from licensing and future apple sales will help fund additional agricultural research and the development of future apple varieties at the university. You can read more about the licensing partnership from the WSU Insider here. 

Sunflare was officially named in Dec. 2024 after a public naming contest received more than 15,000 submissions. The winning name came from Ryan Escarcega, a food service salesperson and chef from Centralia, Wash., who was inspired by the apple’s bright colors and the relationship between sunlight and growing fruit.  

The apple’s development has also given members of the WSU community a chance to try it early. In Jan. 2026, the university hosted its first public Sunflare sampling event at the Pullman campus, inviting students, faculty, and staff to taste the new variety before its commercial release.   

Following the release of the Cosmic Crisp in 2019, Sunflare is the third named apple variety to emerge from WSU’s apple breeding program. Like Sunflare, Cosmic Crisp took decades to develop and has generated more than $30 million in revenue for the university, according to the WSU Insider.  

Cosmic Crisp took only four years to become one of the top ten best-selling apples in the United States. Will the Sunflare garner the same success when it is released to the public? Only time will tell.