Apple Detectives Identify a Lost Progenitor and Rewrite Fruit History
Apple detectives solved mystery of ancient tree and rewrote the history of fruit
A routine DNA test at Washington State University revealed that a mystery apple tree in Maine is a living lost progenitor to hundreds of varieties. The discovery, years in the making, involved a historian, apple hunters, and geneticists. It highlights the urgent need to recover genetic diversity as commercial apple production relies on just 15 varieties, leaving crops vulnerable to disease and climate change.
Maybe there are aspects that people didn’t value in the past and, 200, 300 years ago, selected against. But these days, actually, we do need them.
- CSMastermind
Apples have some of wildest biology that I've seen as a non-professional biologist. At many genes, they carry two different alleles instead of two matching ones. They're almost all self-incompatible. A Honeycrisp flower cannot pollinate a Honeycrisp flower.
This means that you can't breed them in the traditional sense that we do with other plants. Outside of Granny Smith apples the ones you eat are mostly the results of mutations in the grown plants that we cut off and graft.
- altmanaltman
Why is the headline written in a magical realism style in an article about the analysis of the apple tree? "Solved mystery of ancient tree"? "Rewrote the history of fruit"? Like okay, it's cool but it's not Game of Thrones