The Orchard and the Laboratory

PHOTO: JOO NATH/(CC BY-SA 4.0)

The floating white precipitate inside the test tube indicates the DNA has completely separated.

Technological progress is making DNA analysis of apples increasingly affordable.

Gene sequencing has already informed scholarly works on apple diversity and evolution.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota used these techniques to identify numerous errors in the presumed pedigrees of apples published by...scientists at the University of Minnesota. (Gotta love the scientific method!)

British orchardists are using DNA sequencing to put their immense catalog in better order.

DNA analysis also led to a warning about the shallowness of the inbred gene pool for modern commercial apple varieties.

These Prices Are Insane!

Now for a dozen sawbucks per, Dr Cameron Peace, a horticultural geneticist at Washington State University, will sequence and tell you the ancestry of your specific apple tree.

That's how the Maine Heritage Orchard and Fedco Trees unearthed some surprising news about two Maine varieties, Cherryfield and Benton Red. (And a third variety to be named later.)

Another of their genetic work-ups yielded satisfying information about the ancestry of the fabled Black Oxford. As Jacob Mentlik tells us,

It is now clear that Black Oxford received genes for its storage ability from Hunt Russet, while it inherited its stunning purple skin from Blue Pearmain.

Mentlik is the scionwood coordinator for Fedco. 

Maine has a particularly rich apple heritage. 

I'm publishing related posts on a DNA page.