Adam's Apples

THE APPLE OR THE APPLE? PHOTO:  CAPTAIN ORANGE  ( CC BY-ND 2.0 ) Consider the Cherryfield apple, also known as Collins in its early years. This is a Maine variety that was also identified, tentatively, with Benton Red, another apple from the Pine Tree State.

  Researchers tracking the evolution of apples over the years have discovered that modern-day varieties are 3.6 times heavier, about half as acidic, and far less bitter than the wild ancestral species (much like crab apples) from which modern apples are derived. I was going to put on my science reporter hat and describe this research, from scientists at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Genetic analyses get cheaper and more powerful every year, busting myths and providing information about the lineage of apple cultivars. Honeycrisp , to cite a notorious example, is not a Macoun x Honeygold cross, as breeding records from the 1960s suggested. It is rather Keepsake x MN1627 (the latter an uncommercialized variety that has not survived).

Curation is key. Gene sequencing is helping the National Fruit Collection (UK) to prune its orchard and improve its classifications. I reviewed the NFC's searchable apple database in 2008.

The genetic heritage of just a handful of apples dominates commercial production, according to an analysis in the science journal Horticultural Research this month. The top 8 cultivars (really, top 3) dominate the orchard genome The authors ( Migicovsky et al. ) suggest that the lopsided use of these "elite cultivars" by apple breeders "leaves the apple industry vulnerable to evolving pests and pathogens and a changing climate." The study applies recent advances in gene-sequencing technology to the USDA apple germplasm collection . These new methods make feasible an analysis of this scope.

Apples are from Kazakhstan. But how did they get from there to circle the globe? How did they evolve from the wild, and in response to what evolutionary imperatives? One part of the story: the Silk Road. Another: horses.

In this space, I recently published some misinformation about some research into the breeding ancestry of the Honeycrisp apple. I regret the error. Here is the real story.

If only we could store electricity, we wouldn't waste so much of it or want to burn so much coal and oil and gas for times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Now come five scientists who propose developing "cheap and powerful carbon-based active materials for Na-ion batteries." From apples.

"Evidence does not support that an apple a day keeps the doctor away," according to the abstract of a paper published on the web site of the Journal of the American Medical Association today. However, "the small fraction of US adults who eat an apple a day do appear to use fewer prescription medications." That's according to the paper "Association Between Apple Consumption and Physician Visits: Appealing the Conventional Wisdom That an Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away" (JAMA Intern Med doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5466).

Today, gentle reader, step into my laboratory for a tale of science run amok. As related a few years ago in The Fruit Blog, two years before the accident at Three Mile Island researchers in Ohio decided that a little radiation might create a better Melrose.