Adam's Apples

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!)

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.

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.

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.