09/27/2026
The members of a self-assembled apple detective team—including a historian, several apple hunters, two dedicated homeowners, and a crew of geneticists and breeders—combined efforts to identify a mystery apple tree growing on Verona Island in Maine. The ancient tree was found to be a living lost progenitor of hundreds of apple varieties, contributing its characteristics to American apples for centuries.
The discovery might help save the future of American apples.
Apples are the fruit Americans eat the most and one of the top commercial crops in the U.S. And they are under threat. With crops more vulnerable to diseases and environmental stresses, retrieving genetics that have been lost to time and market contraction is crucial to apples’ survival. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-apple-detectives-solved-the-mystery-of-an-ancient-tree-and-rewrote-the-history-of-fruit/
