“Smitten™ brand apples are considered the ‘crown jewel’ of the world’s leading apple breeding program.”

             – Plant Food Research, New Zealand

Growing Smitten™ brand apples,
our breeding program...

Good breeding comes from great parentage. Smitten™ brand apples are a unique mix of the gala, braeburn, falstaff, and fiesta breeding lines. Along with being bred by traditional breeding methods, making Smitten™ brand apples are non-GMO, this resulted in an apple with a great bite sensation combined with full flavor, juiciness, and a sweetness rating of Brix >15. While Smitten™ brand apples produce high Brix, they also have enough citric acid flavoring to create the perfect sweet/tart balance and rich traditional flavor. Because of this outstanding balance, Smitten™ brand apples are the ultimate apples for consumers who like sweet or tart apples.

Smitten™ brand apples are the latest produce of the same breeding program that introduced three of the four most powerful patented varieties currently in the market: Jazz, Honeycrisp, and Pacific Rose.

trials and tests...

Plant Food Research in New Zealand conducts rigorous testing before judging a variety ready for commercial testing. Smitten™ brand trees take roughly five years to produce "mature fruit" to fairly judge qualities and characteristics. After the first growth, Plant Food Research conducted another five years of testing for commercial horticulture and storage conditions.

Just One Taste,
and you'll fall in love...

The flavor and bite of Smitten™ apples are enough to make it a hit, but it had more attractive attributes waiting to surprise us. Its ability to consistently arrive early every season made it even more irresistible – an early season “best eat” apple was something that had rarely been seen before. But that's not all, studies have shown that consumers rank crispness above even taste when selecting apples and Smitten™ brand apples  are uncontested as the best in this area. Smitten™ brand apples also have a great texture that is maintained over time and a firmness that makes the apple more resistant to bruising.

Smitten™ brand apples are not just the choice for eaters, but the choice for growers, too. Smitten™ brand apples provide “on the run” longevity, which means a better product reaches the store and the consumers have longer to enjoy the apple at home.

providing the crunch...

Smitten™ brand apples exceed its ancestral varieties by balancing high natural sugars, aromatics, and pressures indicative of crunch. These benchmarks are all measurable in the laboratory and have been confirmed through research as well as confirmed by rave reviews in taste tests with consumers.

Plant Food Research and Pegasus have followed research over the past several decades that positively prove consumers rank crunch as the number one factor in selecting their favorite apples varieties. Smitten™ brand apples exceed all commercial varieties in this area by a significant magnitude – there is not a competitive variety, new or traditional, that produces and maintains even close to the level of crisp and crunchy texture in storage and in the home that Smitten™ brand apples provide