Cameron Peace, geneticist with WSU, checks seedlings As Washington State University’s apple breeder Dr. Bruce Barritt surveys the 30,000 selections in his evaluation plots, he remarks wistfully that perhaps the future of the Washington apple industry is there. Somewhere. Each year, Barritt makes crosses of promising parent apples, hoping that the offspring will inherit the best qualities of both. In the fall, he picks the fruit, removes thousands of seeds, and grows them into seedlings in the greenhouse the following spring. Which out of all those thousands of seedlings have the sought-after qualities, if any? Until recently, the only way […]