BY Gwyn F. Riddick
According to journalist Thomas Friedman today’s world is truly flat. That is, the world is flat from an economic perspective and communication response time.
It no longer takes weeks or days for news to travel from one side of the globe to the other. Nor does its take weeks or months for disasters or political events around the world to affect our US economy and the way we live.
The same is true for horticulture; no longer does it take years or months to bring new plant breeds to our culture. The Agricultural Research Service agency within the USDA is constantly observing the world for new, helpful varieties to improve the ones we already have. ARS scientists often take foreign excursions to seek new sources of breeding material.
In the mid 1990’s scientists took several trips to central Asia to search for more disease resistant apples to improve the ones we love to eat here in the United States such as Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and McIntosh. The botanists brought rootstocks, grafts and genetic material from 949 wild apple trees to breed with our domestic varieties.
Much of the promising stock was collected in Kazakhstan which was formerly part of the USSR. It is suspected that Kazakhstan is the ancestral home of our common varieties we eat here in the US. Those Kazak trees are resistant to scab and fireblight which attacked my trees this year. The plant scientists also found that the apples contained genes that allow them to adapt to mountainous, near-desert and cold or dry regions. Expect to see continuous improvement in our US apple stocks from these Asian excursions.
Other scientists have been developing new ways to eat apples. They have learned how to pack the nutrition and flavor of two apples into an all natural, healthy snack. The snacks are in the form of the popular energy bars that many of us often eat instead of breakfast. The soft, single-serving bars are made from apple puree that's mixed with apple concentrate and shaped--in a standard piece of food-processing equipment--into neat rectangles.
These bars are now showing up in natural food stores under the trade name of Earth Balance. So you can get your apple a day as a fresh fruit or in a snack pack bar.
Other scientists have taken treks to Chile to search out sources for wild tomato genes to make our tomatoes more resistant to disease. South America is considered to be the ancestral home of our modern tomato where rugged tomatoes grow wild. According to the tomato breeders, “the hardy plants may harbor valuable genes not found in other Chilean specimens at Davis (CA). Those genes may enrich the nutritional value of tomorrow's supermarket and backyard garden tomatoes, (Lycopersicum esculentum), or perhaps boost resistance to its formidable insect and disease enemies.”
Now at the University of California-Davis, plants are being grown from the wild tomato seed, so scientists can further investigate tomato's genetic diversity and can provide seed samples to other researchers and tomato breeders worldwide. All so we can have a better tomato sandwich.