‘Giant Orange’ from Sagada amazes Baguio folk, visitors

Baguio City – The “giant oranges” delivered here from Sagada, Mountain Province, awed hundreds of churchgoers and visitors passing by the Baguio public market, as their bright yellow color literally adorn the long line of fruit stalls here.

The fruit, which is as sweet as the popular Valencia orange, has a diameter of six inches and at first glance, it appears like a pomegranate (suha) with orange covering.

Max Maslan, 40, remembers that his father who once served as a regional director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) was among those who developed the unique variety of orange, and first propagated it in Kalinga.

Fruit growers in Sagada who are excellent pomologists who grow at commercial scale other varieties of oranges, apples, persimmon, and other temperate fruits, included planting the unique orange in their wide orchards.

In year 2000, the first jeeploads of the giant orange harvested from Sagada were unloaded in this city. From then on, the giant oranges were to be called “Sagada Orange.”

Likewise, the farmers have to grow the fruit as one of the “high-value crops” in the mountainous region to also help local environmentalists in reforesting denuded mountainsides.

Being very saleable during Christmas and New Year, the fruit growers from all over the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), find plentiful harvest during the cool months.

Complex as it seems, the Sagada orange remain as outstanding “one-town, one-product” (OTOP) in several areas of Benguet, Mountain Province, and Kalinga. -- PNA