Tag Archives: genetics

Preserving diversity with some peach-mint jam

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We are knee deep in peach season, and now is the time to gather the most diverse array of peaches you can find and unite them in jam. Katherine reports on some new discoveries about the genetics behind peach diversity and argues for minting up your peach jam.

Jam inspiration

Fresh peaches at their peak are fuzzy little miracles, glorious just as they are. But their buttery mouthfeel and dripping juice are lost when peaches are processed into jam and spread across rough toast. To compensate for textural changes, cooked peaches need a bit more adornment to heighten their flavor, even if it’s only a sprinkling of sugar. Normally I am not tempted to meddle with perfection by adding ginger or lavender or other flavors to peach jam. This year, however, as I plotted my jam strategy, the unusual juxtaposition of peach and mint found its way into my imagination over and over again, like the insistent echo of radio news playing in the background. Peach and mint, peach and mint, peach and mint – almost becoming a single word. To quiet the voice in my head I had to make some peach-mint jam. The odd combination turned out to be wonderful, and I’m now ready to submit the recipe to a candid world. As we will see below, it’s not without precedent. Mmmmmmpeachmint jam. Continue reading →

Triple threat watermelon

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Will seedless watermelons make us superhuman or turn our children into giants?  Hardly, but they do give home cooks the power to count chromosomes without a microscope.   Just a knife or a hard thunk on the sidewalk are enough to get a watermelon to spill its genetic guts.

If you were reading a Hearst Corporation newspaper in late 1937, you might have thought humanity would eventually be swallowed up by giant carnivorous plants, unwittingly unleashed by uncontrolled biotechnology.  The San Francisco Examiner reported on November 21st of that year that the discovery of an “elixir of growth,” meant that “…science may at last have a grip on the steering wheel of evolution, and be able to produce at will almost any kind of species…”  including “…a plague of man-eating ones.”  In 1937 Americans had much more important things to worry about, just as we do now.  Still, that discovery may in fact have threatened one cherished aspect of the American way of life by triggering the slow demise of late summer state fair watermelon seed spitting contests.  It doubtlessly paved the way for seedless watermelons, and in 2014 the total harvest of seedless watermelons on American farms – nearly 700 thousand tons – outweighed the seeded watermelon harvest more than 13 to 1 (USDA National Watermelon Report). A similar pattern is emerging this year.  Is there no stopping the attack of the seedless watermelons?

Image from microfilm of an actual page in the San Francisco Examiner, published Sunday November 21, 1937. Found in the Media and Microtext Center of Stanford University Libraries.

CLICK to read. Image from microfilm of an actual page in the San Francisco Examiner, published Sunday November 21, 1937. Found in the Media and Microtext Center of Stanford University Libraries.

And more important, how is it even possible to get seedless fruit from an annual plant?  From a plant whose only mode of reproduction is through those very seeds?  From a plant that cannot make suckers as bananas do and cannot be perpetuated endlessly through grafts like fruit trees and vines?   Such is the challenge posed every single year by watermelons, but thanks to the “elixir of growth” discovered by Albert Blakeslee and subsequent work by Hitoshi Kihara, one of the most prominent agricultural geneticists of the 20th century, the world has an elegant solution. Breeders continually improve the varieties available, and consumer demand keeps growing, yet seedless watermelon production methods have remained essentially unchanged for three quarters of a century. Continue reading →

Apples: the ultimate everyday accessory

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Infinity scarves? No. They won’t keep doctors away. Apples are the ultimate everyday accessory (fruit). Katherine explains where the star in the apple comes from. Could it be due to a random doubling of chromosomes? We also give readers the chance to test their apple knowledge with a video quiz.

Although apples are not particularly American – nor is apple pie – they color our landscape from New York City to Washington State, all thanks to Johnny Appleseed. Or so goes the legend. Everyone already knows a lot about apples, and for those wanting more, there are many engaging and beautifully written stories of their cultural history, diversity, and uses. See the reference list below for some good ones. There is no way I could cover the same ground, so instead I’ll keep this post short and sweet (or crisp and tart) by focusing on apple fruit structure and some interesting new studies that shed light on it.
Of course if you do want to learn more about apple history but have only 5 minutes, or if you want to test your current knowledge, take our video quiz! It’s at the bottom of this page. Continue reading →