Researchers, including those at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) in the US, sequenced and compared the genomes of 117 diverse apple accessions, including M domestic and 23 wild species from North America, Europe, and East and central Asia.
โWe narrowed down the origin of domesticated apple from very broad central Asia to the Kazakhstan area west of Tian Shan Mountain,โ said Zhangjun Fei, professor at BTI.
Researchers discovered that the first domesticated apple had travelled to the east, hybridising with local wild apples along the way, yielding the ancestors of soft, dessert apples cultivated in China today.
โWe pointed out two major evolutionary routes, west and east, along the Silk Road, revealing fruit quality changes in every step along the way,โ Fei said.
Researchers also found that as the apple travelled west along the Silk Road in the hands of travellers, trees grew from dropped seeds and crossed with other wild apple varieties, including the incredibly sour European crabapple.
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The hybridisation between ancient cultivated apples and M sylvestris [European crabapple], followed by extensive human selection, gave us new apples that are larger and fuller in flavor, and with a crispy firmness that gives them a longer shelf life, researchers said.
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