Ancient apples identified

Scientists from the University of Bristol have been scouring orchards and gardens for ancient cider apple trees, using DNA ‘fingerprints’ taken from leaves to identify and save heritage varieties. Professor Keith Edwards says they’ve found hundreds of unrecorded apples. “Ancient varieties are important for genetic diversity – once you’ve lost diversity it’s hard to get it back.” Discover more at bit.ly/apple-source

Leaf samples have led to hundreds of unrecorded apple varieties