Do You Know the Origins of Apples?

The apple is, without any doubt, the most familiar fruit in the world. It is cultivated in temperate environments throughout the world and its history is deeply intertwined with humanity. The representations of large red fruits in classical art show that domesticated apples were present in southern Europe more than two millennia ago, and the ancient seeds of archaeological sites attest to the fact that people have been collecting wild apples in Europe and western Asia for more than ten thousand years. While people have kept close to wild apple populations for millennia, the process of domestication or evolutionary change in human cultivation in these trees is unclear.

Several recent genetic studies have shown that the modern apple is a hybrid of at least four populations of wild apples, and researchers have hypothesized that the Silk Road commercial routes were responsible for binding these fruits together and causing their hybridization. Archaeological remains of apples have been recovered in the form of preserved seeds from the Eurasian sites, and these discoveries support the idea that fruit and nut trees were among the commodities that moved on these early trade routes. The apple has a deep connection with the Silk Road: much of the genetic material of the modern apple originated in the heart of the old trade routes in the Tien Shan mountains of Kazakhstan. In addition, the exchange process caused the hybridization events that led to the large sweet red fruits in our product markets.

Observing evolutionary processing in modern plants and fossils can help academics interpret the process of domestication. Sweet fleshy fruits evolve to attract animals to eat and spread their seeds; Large fruits evolve specifically to attract large animals to disperse them.

Large fruits evolved to attract the ancient megafauna

While most scholars who study domestication focus on the period in which humans begin to grow a plant, in this study, Spengler explores the processes in nature that set the stage for domestication. Spengler suggests that understanding the process of evolution of great fruits in nature will help us understand the process of their domestication.

Many fruit plants in the family of apples (Rosaceae) have small fruits, such as cherries, raspberries and roses. These small fruits are easily swallowed by the birds, which then disperse their seeds. However, certain family trees, such as apples, pears, quince and peaches, evolved in nature to be too large for a bird to disperse its seeds. The genetic and fossil evidence shows that these great fruits evolved several million years before humans began to grow them. So, who did these great fruits evolve to attract them?

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190527094118.htm