The following is an edited excerpt.
Humans are attempting a second massive transformation of the plant kingdom. The first was the painstaking domestication of wild plant species for food: over millennia, farmers turned small seeds and fruits into the grocery-store sized beauties we know today. Biting into a peach is the end result of 4,000 years of careful breeding and cultivation. Humans have spent millennia reshaping the genetics of a wild fruit tree from China into the fruit in our grovestands.
Now, scientists are identifying genes with modern genetics that will let us design trees for [making ethanol]. Publishing in the journal Nature Genetics, scientists in the International Peach Genome Initiative, have published the 265-million base genome of the Lovell variety of Prunus persica, and started unraveling the genes that may unlock the potential of biofuels from trees.
Read the full article here: Could A Delicious Peach Hold The Secret To Biofuel?
