History

In 1980 Jos Morren discovered four surprisingly red-colored apples on the top of a tree in his Jonagold orchard. Fascinated by this phenomenon, he decided to study it on his own. In 1981 he grafted twenty trees with the budwood taken from the mutated branch. In order to check the stability of this spontaneous red mutation, he took all the budwood from one of those twenty trees to produce trees of the second generation.

In 1983 he picked 5 apples from the trees of the first generation. All the fruit had the same deep-red color as that from the original tree. The next year he picked identical fruit from the second-generation trees. Meanwhile, the apples were tested for storage and taste qualities each year. Because Jos Morren was deeply convinced of the quality of this apple variety, he decided to apply for Plant Breeders' Rights under the proposed name "Jonagored".

What started as a fantasy of nature, became an important new apple variety. The fruit grower disposes of a high quality apple that is easy to grow and to store. The distributors are offered the advantage of a product with a long shelf-life and moreover an apple that is easy to sell. Finally, the consumer buys a delicious, top-quality apple, which is available all the year round.