Science done right

I am feeling pretty beaten up today. There is a bug going around according to Southern Belle and the maple pollen counts are high.

As I sat in the official blogging chair of the Eaton Rapids Joe blog, I dipped into the internet and stumbled across an example of "good" science.

Background

In the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, a delegation of scientists from the US surveyed the mountains of Central Asia east of the Aral Sea basin. Scientist hypothesize that these mountains are the ancestral home of modern, domestic apples. Dried fruit and seeds moved westward along the migration and trading routes and interacted with native species in Asia Minor and Europe. The small number of seeds in the original migration was seen as a genetic bottleneck.

It was speculated that there could be all kinds of useful genes in the larger population the progenitors of the original apples (called Malus sieversii), genes that could be very useful in terms of disease and insect resistance, resistance to cold (temperatures sometimes hit -40F in the mountains), drought and salt.

The first expeditions were in 1995 and 1995. There were FORESTS of wild apple trees, many of them bearing fruit of very high quality. Seeds were harvested by the hundreds, even thousands. Scion for grafting was collected from the elite specimens to be propagated in the United States. 

Magazine articles were written and illustrated with pictures of these wild orchards and bear tracks and bear poop.

TV interviews were made on PBS and BBC and Discovery channels.

It was a Very Big Deal. It was the botanical version of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

...and then...

DNA testing became an everyday tool in the lab and scientists started looking at the samples the expeditions brought back.

It seems likely that various товарищ (komrades) had moved commercial orchards into the wild forests as a way to avoid the heavy hand of the central government. Interspersing the domestic apple trees with the wild M. sieversii not only hid the production from the authorities, it resulted in hybrids between the two and those progeny were the ones that most attracted the eyes of the expedition.

Rabbit-hole details

The DNA data had enough resolution to (usually) identify the parents or grandparents of the samples tested.

In order of frequency mentioned, those varieties are

• Alexander (Ukrainian apple)
• Golden Reinette (from Denmark or England depending on where you ask)
• Charlamoff (perhaps "Charlamowsky" a Duchess of Oldenburg type apple)
• Rosmarina Bianca (an apple from northern Italy)
• Golden Pearmain (possibly from southeastern US)
• Lowland Raspberry (Russian)
• Yellow Transparent (Russian)
•  
• ....Mostly onesie-twosies after this... 
•  
• Reinette Simirenko (Ukrainian)
• Zigeunerapfel (oldest known apple cultivar from Germany)
• Gragylling (Sweden)
• Gross de Saint Clement (Belgium, maybe)
• Kuron Kitaika (Russian/Ukrainian, a hybrid of M. domestica x M. prunifolia)
• Spasovka Kvasna (Russian. Kvasna is Russian for hard cider)
• Kostlicher (Golden Delicious?  West Virginia)
• Weisser Tafelapfel (German)
• Yellow Bellflower (New Jersey or possibly Cornwall, England)

What tickles me about this information is that the scientists involved simply reported the data. They didn't point fingers. They didn't trash-talk. They simply updated the reports with addendums. They had tools that the scientists in 1995 did not have. And frankly, the scientists who were on the expedition were aware that "introgression of genes from Malus domestica" was a very real possibility. The apples they were finding were simply too good to be true.

Another perspective is that this is analogous to the post on the feral apple orchards of Ontario. Those orchards were over-represented by seedlings with Tolman Sweet and Wealthy ancestry. The wild orchards in Kzakistan were even more heavily over-represented by seedlings with Alexander, Golden Reinette and Charlamoff ancestry. 

Plant update

If you look closely, you will notice that the plants are growing in shallow water.

Walmart had these at very attractive prices and the plants arrived in good shape.

Two more packages were delivered today. One held a gooseberry plant, cv. Tixia. The "Tixia" I purchased last year turned into a currant bush. The other package held 9 Louisiana Iris plants cv. Ann Chowning.