Peeling back history: Apple’s family tree revealed

AS you bite into a crisp, juicy apple, you may think you know where it came from – a local grower, perhaps, or some far-off foreign orchard.

But that fruit owes its existence to a mountainous region of Kazakhstan and traders using the Silk Road between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Using DNA analysis, scientists have pinpointed where the first wild edible apples grew – an area west of Tian Shan mountains on the Kazakh-Chinese border. Traders travelling the Silk Road, the caravan trail between China and the Mediterranean, would munch on the large, bland fruit, scientific name Malus sieversii.

Pips they discarded at the wayside sprouted into new trees. In western Europe, Siberia and the Caucasus mountains, they crossbred with the native smaller, harder crab apples. While crab apples – Malus sylvestris – are extremely bitter, the new varieties were more palatable. As apples spread, hybridization continued and, with human help, resulted in the 7,500 varieties of Malus domestica now cultivated across the globe.

Researchers at BTI in New York state and Shandong Agricultural University in China came to their conclusions by comparing the DNA of 117 types of apple.

Writing in Nature Communications they said that they believe the apples left Kazakhstan between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago along the Silk Road, the route along which goods such as textiles, horses and spices were traded. Lead author Zhangjun Fei said the Kazakh apples had also been taken east, hybridising with wild Chinese apples to create sweet varieties.

‘We pointed out two major evolutionary routes, west and east, along the Silk Road, revealing fruit quality changes in every step along the way,’ he said.

The Kazakh people have long suspected their land is the home of the fruit. Almaty, the former capital, derives its name from the Kazakh for ‘fatherland of the apple’.