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Landscape Blog
09/25/09
A New Apple from the University of Minnesota
September is here and it is apple season – local orchards are open for business, selling bushels of early ripening apples, making cider and yummy pies.
One new apple you may have heard about recently, on the news or in the newspaper is the SweeTango™ apple, which was developed right here at the University of Minnesota.
The U of M is introducing this plant in a very different way than they have in the past. Typically, they license nursery growers, who grow trees and sell them to orchardists and homeowners. A royalty is paid, per tree sold, to the University. This money helps fund future breeding work.
The most famous U of M fruit tree introduction has been the Honeycrisp apple, which has become wildly successful, although did you know that it was introduced over 20 years ago? The University collected approximately 8 million dollars in royalties over the 20 year life of the patent.
In order to get even more return on their breeding investment, the University has chosen to license one orchard to control the release of SweeTango™. That orchard is Pepin Heights, in southern Minnesota. Pepin Heights is licensing large orchards across the country, as well as some small orchards here in Minnesota to grow this tree. The fruit is harvested by those orchards, and sent to Pepin Heights, where they distribute the fruit to your local grocery stores. A royalty is paid to the University of Minnesota on every BUSHEL of apples sold. In the long run, this will add up to some wonderful royalty income for the fruit breeding program at the U.
But, this also means that the tree will NOT be available in your local garden center for you to buy and put in your own backyard. That is, it won’t be available until the patent runs out in 2028! So, once you get a taste of SweeTango™ (which was developed with Honeycrisp as one of the parents), don’t rush to the garden center to buy one. You’ll have to wait patiently for 20 years to grow it yourself, and in the meantime, buy your apples at Pepin Heights or in a local grocery store.
There have been a lot of newspaper articles and television news stories on SweeTango™. You can google it, and find all sorts of interesting information if you would like to research it further.
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