Stone fruit breeding began at Washington State University in 1949 with the arrival of Dr. Harold Fogle, who had just finished his doctorate at the University of Minnesota. In 1952, by crossing the two red cherries Bing and Van, he developed the blushed Rainier cherry. The variety—WSU’s first—was released in 1960 but did not become popular until long after Fogle had left to join the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland. He was succeeded at WSU, Prosser, in 1963 by Dr. Tom Toyama. In 1968, the cherry breeding program in Summerland, British Columbia, released Stella, its first self-fertile ­variety […]