Category: National News

Apple revival: how science is bringing historic varieties back to life

Exploring the genomes of half-forgotten and heirloom apple varieties could help to ensure the future of the incomparable fruits.

When Jude Schuenemeyer picked the apple up off the ground in December 2017, he wondered whether his two-decade search was over. It was a firm winter apple, orange in colour with a distinctive ribbed shape and wider than it was tall. “We knew right away that we had never seen it before,” Schuenemeyer says.

He and his wife, Addie, started the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project in 2008 to find and revive endangered heirloom apple varieties. The horticulturalists, based in Cortez, Colorado, had made a few discoveries, but there was one coveted variety that had eluded them: the Colorado Orange. Once a popular apple in the western United States, it had essentially disappeared by 1900. And although the Schuenemeyers had chased a few false leads in the past, this apple — from an almost-dead tree on a private piece of land near Cañon City — looked promising. Continue reading at Nature Magazine…

By Christopher Kemp, October 17, 2023

FOR THE LOVE OF APPLES: MONTEZUMA ORCHARD RESTORATION PROJECT

February is upon us and we turn from a love letter to one place, to a labor of love in conserving some of the fruits of human’s labors in many places on earth – apples. We’re in conversation with Jude Schuenemeyer, who with his wife Addie has spent decades discovering, researching, documenting, protecting, restoring, and propagating the rich diversity of heritage apple varieties in Colorado’s southwestern-most Montezuma county.

Listen to the podcast

The diversity of apple genetics in this region traces back 150 years or more, and as apple tree pruning, and apple scion wood selection, and grafting seasons are all upon us, Jude is with us this week to share more about how The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project ( affectionately referred to as MORP) is preserving historic orchards and simultaneously cultivating food, economic, and environmental strength in their region. Listen to the podcast at Cultivating Place…

By Jennifer Jewell | January 2, 2023

What’s in a name? The importance of identity in heirloom apple tree preservation

Historic North American apple (Malus domestica) orchards that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with cultivar compositions unlike today’s orchards, are vanishing. There are several reasons for this loss: tree aging, cost of tree maintenance, and urbanization. Many groups have collected local knowledge regarding the history and horticulture of apples using both phenotypic and genotypic identification methods. Some of these groups have joined with scientists to form the collaborative “Historic Fruit Tree Working Group of North America” to facilitate the conservation of heirloom apple cultivars in North America through documentation, identification, collaboration, and education. Read full journal article at Plants, People, Planet…

By Amy Dunbar-Wallis, Gayle M. Volk, Alexandra M. Johnson, Adalyn Schuenemeyer, John Bunker, David Castro, Todd Little-Siebold, Lydia Pendergast, Richard Uhlmann, Laura Sieger, David Benscoter, Cameron P. Peace | July 31, 2022

In Search of the Elusive Colorado Orange

In a broadcast that originally aired on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with Jude Schuenemeyer from Colorado about the history of apple cultivation in Colorado, his work finding and preserving heritage apple varieties—and the recent “rediscovery” an a variety that he and his wife Addie have been working to track down and identify for 20 years: the Colorado Orange. Listen to podcast at Food Garden Life Show…

By Food Garden Life Show | October 8, 2020

This ‘Extinct’ Colorado Apple Could Be Available in Grocery Stores Soon

Try describing the look and taste of a Honeycrisp apple. Even when holding one in your hand, this task isn’t so easy. It’s red, and is, uh, crisp. But many of the thousands of known apple varieties have similar appearances and flavors. Nowadays, genetic testing can allow growers to confirm specific cultivars (in much the same we can learn that a wine grape variety has been mislabeled for decades), but attempting to rediscover “lost” apple varieties that are only preserved through historical records is more akin to detective work… and in the end, you simply hope you got the right suspect.

After two decades of sleuthing, Addie and Jude Schuenemeyer—founders of the Colorado-based Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project—are officially saying “case closed” on one of their apple hunts. Addie says they are now “98 percent sure, give or take 3 percent” that they’ve rediscovered a local variety once thought to have disappeared: the Colorado Orange apple. Read full article in Food & Wine…

By Mike Pomranz | September 21, 2020

Growing Apples to Conserve Water

For Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer, growing apples preserves a rich cultural history in Colorado. And, growing apples might just be a viable solution to supporting their local economy while sustainably managing water in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin.

The Colorado River is often called America’s hardest-working river. Demands for water exceed supply, causing the river to dry up before it reaches the sea. Water from the river irrigates more than five million acres of agricultural land and provides drinking water for 40 million people across seven states and two countries. And the lack of water will only get worse as climate change increases drought and water scarcity in the West.

The scale and consequences of water and the Colorado can seem insurmountable. But, Jude and Addie are hoping their pilot project will provide a solution and spread hope for the river.  Continue reading at The Nature Conservancy…

By The Nature Conservancy, March 3, 2020

The Colorado Orange apple was thought to be extinct until now

The Colorado Orange apple was thought to be extinct until now

Though Washington state’s apple growers recently made headlines with the introduction of the crunchy new Cosmic Crisp variety, Colorado has a long history as an apple growing state. Now that history has resurfaced with the discovery of the rare Colorado Orange apple, thought to be possibly extinct.
The discovery comes from Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project (MORP), an organization that “works to preserve Colorado’s fruit- growing heritage and restore an orchard culture and economy to the southwestern region.” Co-founders Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer started the organization to preserve the apple-growing history of Montezuma county, the Southwestern corner of the state that borders Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

According to MORP, Colorado was a prolific apple producing state starting in the 1860s, winning three gold medals for its fruit at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Since then the many grown in the state have fallen out of favor in the marketplace; luckily many of those orchards still exist, with 100-year-old trees still producing fruit. Read more in Sunset.com

for Sunset ELLEN FORT – December 30, 2019

The Rediscovery Of The Colorado Orange Apple: NPR

The Rediscovery Of The Colorado Orange Apple

In Colorado they have rediscovered a long-lost apple, the Colorado Orange apple. Jude Schuenemeyer talks about the discovery.

 
December 29, 20197:54 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

  

 Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:As the decade comes to a close, we can now report that, in fact, you can mix apples and oranges – well, kind of. In the western United States, apple anthropologists are excited about the rediscovery of an apple variety that was believed to be extinct. It’s called the Colorado Orange apple. Jude Schuenemeyer of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project in southwestern Colorado helped track down the orange apple. We asked him what makes it so special.

JUDE SCHUENEMEYER: So the Colorado Orange is a mix of sweet and tart. Being a winter apple, the flavor opens up over time. So winter apples, like the Colorado Orange, you wouldn’t even think of starting to eat until Christmas. You’d go through all your summer apples, all your fall apples. You’d have these in the root cellar. And then starting Christmas, you’d start to pull these out. And month by month, the flavor would open up. A little bit of the sweet would go – a little bit of the tang might. But they were still going to be very flavorful. They have some of the most complex flavors of any apples you’ll ever have. Culinary-wise, they have some of the most complex flavors you’ll ever have in anything.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Colorado Orange was popular in the late 1800s. But around the 1940s, it started to disappear.

SCHUENEMEYER: The biggest thing it had going against it was that it was a yellowish-orange-ish-glowed apple at a time when America was going into monoculture where shiny, red apples were considered the only apples worth buying. It wasn’t because it was bad quality or didn’t grow well. It lost out, like so many of the thousands and thousands of apple varieties that have gone extinct. It lost out because it wasn’t the shiny, red apple.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Schuenemeyer says locals around Canyon City, Colo., cherished the orange apple.

SCHUENEMEYER: They knew it was a really high-quality apple, winner apple, good keeping apple. And in Canyon City, the memory of it was kept alive for a long time. And the old timer’s like, oh, yeah. I used to have a tree. It died. But we kept thinking there was still going to be one around. We felt like we could still find one.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And so he and his wife, Addie, started combing the state.

SCHUENEMEYER: Two years ago, we were in Canyon City in this orchard in December. And this person, Mr. Diana, said, hey. I’ve got a tree also. And he took us to a tree. My wife Addie and I looked at it. And lo and behold, on the ground underneath the tree in the duff, there were these orange-blushed apples. And then on the tree, there were some of the apples still hanging. And it had that really good, sub-acid, flavorful taste that you’d expect from a winter Apple. So yeah. It was a a big moment for us.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But the Shuenemeyers have been careful and taking their time. They did cutting-edge DNA testing and compared their find to some archival wax apple replicas at Colorado State University. They wanted to make sure they’d found the actual orange apple of memory.

SCHUENEMEYER: Because it’s considered extinct, there’s probably never an absolute. But we’ve got as close to an absolute as we can. Between this newest new DNA technology, the historical purveyors of the orchard itself and the waxed apple to compare it to, that’s an extraordinary amount of information that most people would never be able to have to compare anything.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And so in a couple of years, once the young trees get going, keep your eyes open in the produce section for something new. And please restrain yourself from asking Jude Schuenemeyer about mixing apples and oranges.

SCHUENEMEYER: (Laughter) Yeah, yeah. People – when they hear of the Colorado orange, they definitely wonder what we’re talking about. That’s for sure.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.