I just finished reading the chapter 1 of “The Botany of Desire” – Desire: Sweetness/Plant: The Apple. In addition to what I have previously written about this chapter, I learned a few more things about this chapter:
1. There are vast genetic resources in apple species, but most of them (about 90%) are lost in the cultivated apple varieties due to the artificial selection of “desirable traits” such as sweetness, redness, largeness, roundness, et al. Selection for other traits, such as disease resistance and hardiness, are often neglected. So now we have to rely heavily on pesticides and insecticides to control the diseases in an apple orchard. It has become increasingly imperative to develop disease-resistant apple varieties due to the environmental concerns. In order to find the disease resistant genes in apple species, we need to preserve the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan, only where a genetic diversity can be found.