Carte de Fruit de la France

I don't have anything to add to this (which, like so many wonderful things I post, I found over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog), but that doesn't make it any less cool:



In case you're wondering, no, I do not know French. So the title above was entirely made up. And yet Babelfish tells me it's correct! I feel all cool and polyglot today. I also translated several things at work into Spanish (a language I at least sort of know) with only a few minor errors.

Update: I just had a reader mention that he's trying to track down a copy of the map, so probably I should provide some sort of a link beyond a vague indication of what website I found it in. I found it here, and they found it here, and apparently they found it here, which I can't read on account of the aforementioned not knowing French issue, but it looks pretty cool.

Korean fruits?

I'm off to South Korea on Friday, for nine days, and would welcome any recommendations on Korean fruit I ought to try while I'm there. I know February/March is not prime fruit season most places in the Northern Hemisphere, but I'll try what I can. I've got a local guide, but he's not as fruit-centric as some people (such as me), so I don't want to miss something.

How do I get in on this racket?

Apparently a Japanese grower is raking in big bucks for gigantic strawberries:

Berries, $841 apiece (Rockhampton Morning Bulletin)

Now, granted, it's 841 Australian dollars...that's only US$540. But still...

80 grams seems like a big strawberry, but I've seen several selections that averaged close to fifty, so I don't think it would be hard to get a variety with primary fruits of 80 grams, and at $841 apiece, one could afford to harvest the primaries and pitch the rest.

The statement about fructose is, in my opinion, off base, though. Although there is a relationship between size and sweetness, it's not a terribly strong one. Plus, fructose is not the only sugar in strawberries--in fact sucrose generally accounts for around half of the sugars, and glucose is important as well.

Weed control by guinea pig?

Although I feel at least as fond of grapes as any fruit (they were the first fruit I studied), I must confess that most articles on wine kind of bore me, as they have a tendency to just rehash the same ideas about the same small set of varieties, while I would much rather focus on new varieties, or just drinking the wine.

Most of this is true about this article, however the image of eleven million guinea pigs patrolling a vineyard, along with a race of dwarf sheep, made me like it anyway:

Sauvignon strategies, some involving sheep (Financial Times)

Bananacasts

The Voice Of America has five podcasts/articles (I have no idea if the articles and the podcasts say the same things, as I haven't made it very far into either at this stage) on bananas:

Banana Mooted As Top Crop In Africa (1 of 5)
Disease Threatens Banana Industry (2 of 5)
Top Trade Lawyer Doubts Feasibility of East African Banana Exports to Europe (3 of 5)
Governments and Global Businesses Urged to Help African Banana Sector (4 of 5)
Sweeping Reforms Needed to Improve African Banana Industry (5 of 5)

I've thought a little bit about doing a fruit breeding podcast, but I'm not convinced it's worth the bother.

No more Ziziphus zizyphus?

Some of you may have seen this in the comments, but I figure I would elevate it to a more visible position. Reader Christopher Taylor (who, judging by his two blogs, is way more qualified to comment on systematics than I am) sent along the following article in response to my earlier story on the Latin binomial for the jujube:

Proposal to conserve the name Ziziphus jujuba against Z. zizyphus (Rhamnaceae) (Taxon)

As I have said before, my personal leanings in taxonomy are based solely on sentiment and entertainment value (though from an objective standpoint I can see the value of well-done taxonomy) so you know where I come down in this argument...

(Thanks, Christopher!)

Fruit Genetics Friday #8: Picking a Scab Resistance Gene

I know the title is a pretty bad pun, and not even that accurate. Sorry. Anyway, here's the bit about scab resistance I hacked out of the draft on the WineCrisp apple:

The Vf gene comes out of a selection Malus floribunda. The original introgression of the Vf gene (or genes, but more on that later) was done by Purdue back in the 1940's, and has been used heavily in breeding, including as a fairly early target of marker assisted selection (a detailed history of scab resistance breeding is available from Purdue. I'll hit the highlights here.)

There are at least seven distinct loci governing resistance to apple scab, each named according to the original source (the "V" is for Venturia inaequalis, the name of the pathogen):

Vf - Malus floribunda
Vm - Malus micromalus
Va - 'Antonovka'
Vb - Malus baccata Hansen's #2
Vbj - Malus baccata ssp. jackii
Vr - Malus pumila R12740-7A
Vr2 - Malus pumila GMAL 2743

There are distinct races of the scab pathogen, though, and they react differently to the different resistances. Race 5 overcomes Vm, for example, while Race 2 overcomes the resistance in some M. baccata. In 40 years of breeding, no resistance breaking isolate of Vf was identified, but towards the end of the twentieth century reports began to surface in Europe of strains which could overcome Vf.

As I hinted before, it's probably more appropriate to refer to the Vf locus, rather than the Vf gene, because the Mendelian Vf gene is in reality a collection of genes. (Although I use it as much as anyone else (probably more), the word "gene" is actually kind of a problematic one anyway--it's really better to use "locus", to refer to a specific point in the genome, or "allele" to refer to a specific sequence at that locus.) Sequencing showed the so-called Vf gene to be a cluster of four genes, Vfa1, Vfa2, Vfa3, and Vfa4. Clusters of resistance genes aren't uncommon and have been shown in lots of species--it may be the extra copies strengthen the resistance by increasing expression, or allow a broader resistance by having multiple versions. It's also possible that resistance alleles are more likely to evolve from duplicated genes, because the plant can better survive mutations in a gene it already has backup copies of. In this case, Vfa3 has sustain some pretty serious mutation, and no longer produces a full length transcript. Although the similarity among the remaining four led researchers to suggest that all activate the same defensive systems, Vfa1 and Vfa2 (along with the partial transcript of Vfa3) are primarily expressed in immature leaves, while Vfa4 is expressed in mature leaves. Of these, Transgenic apples transformed with each of these apples showed that susceptible varieties expressing Vfa1 and Vfa2 became resistant, suggesting these two genes are capable of conveying resistance.

The Vf locus was really one of the first fruit genes to really be thoroughly investigated and described, from its introgression from a wild species, description as a Mendelian trait, and detailed dissection on the molecular level. Although other source of scab resistance are gaining in importance, and molecular tools such as linked markers developed to improve their usefulness to breeding programs, the Vf locus remains possibly the most studied disease resistance locus in any fruit crop. (I'm just speaking off the top of my head...Anybody think of any other contenders?)

50,000 visits!

Just thought I'd note that the Fruit Blog scored it's 50,000th visitor today! (Or actually, it's 50,000th visit--I'm sure 10,000 of those are just me, over and over again, but I'm not going to quibble). Interestingly, the counter at the bottom doesn't register it...that thing has been out of whack with the internal numbers for a while. I should probably get rid of it, but I've gotten used to looking at it.

If you'd told me in 2005, when I started this thing, that I'd ever hit 50,000 visitors, I'd have laughed. That there's so many of you that want to read me random fruit-ramblings is both amazing and encouraging, and gives me hope that maybe I'm not quite as insane as some of my friends make me out to be.

I kind of feel like some sort of critical mass was accomplished in the last month or so--things seem to have really picked up in terms of traffic here.

Anyway, thanks again for showing up, and for all the contributions readers have made in comments and e-mails. See you at 100,000!

It's not as far north, but...

...it's a heck of a lot colder than London:

Don's Cold Hardy Citrus

Granted, they're not looking at grapefruit, but I'm duly impressed with anybody who can get an edible Poncirus hybrid. A very cool site, and a good resource for those interested in breeding cold-hardy citrus.

The site is set up in reverse blog fashion, with the new stuff on the bottom, which I find unreasonably distracting and odd.

(Todd Wert, a friend of mine from grad school, pointed this page out to me).

Also, here's a fun-looking citrus page in German, one of the users' pages from the forum page.

Anyone know of any more northerly grapefruits?

From the Home Citrus Growers site I recently discovered:

World's Northernmost Fruiting Grapefruit? (Home Citrus Growers)

Anybody know of anything further north than London (there's a claim for Porlock, but if you're going to make fruiting a criterion I think you have to actually ripen the fruit)? Really I think the UK is probably the only place with a shot at growing it this far north. I've seen some kind of citrus growing in a greenhouse in Iceland (I can't recall what it was) but I think to count it really has to be outdoors...where's the challenge in growing it in a greenhouse...even if it is an immensely cool greenhouse heated only by infernal depths of the earth.

Another honor from a site I've never heard of.

Actually, I think it's essentially the same site, since the same person e-mailed me to let me know about it.

Anyway, it looks like we're in the top 100 Botany Blogs, too (#13 this time, though again it doesn't really look like a ranking).

(I kind of suspect their both just scams to link to as many popular blogs as possible to drive up traffic on their own site, which is one of those content-poor places you stumble across when Googling and wonder if anyone ever reads. However, regardless of the motivation, I am once again in good company, so I'm rather complimented anyway.)

You think this blog is overly specialized?

Over and over again, outside of work, when I tell people about this site, their reaction is frequently: How on earth do you find enough to write about? At which point I could point out that I have on occasion gone months without posting anything, but the problem there is more one of being busy (sometimes) or lazy (more often) and not a lack of material. As any one who has actually had a conversation with me about fruits can attest, I never run out of material.

Still, it gives me a little secret pleasure every time I find a fruit blog more specialized than mine, especially when said blog is extensive and well-written. Granted that almost never happens. But here's one case where it actually did:

Adam's Apples

Adam writes exclusively about apples. In fact, he writes almost exclusively about apple cultivars, which he tastes, photographs, and describes with surprising regularity (several times a week, pretty much continuously since July). I've been meaning to post the link for ages but I don't think I have. Of course, I never remember what I've posted if I don't post it immediately after finding it, so for all I know I just post the same three links over and over around here. This one merits a link over on the side, as well.

Update: I've been digging through the archives at Adam's Apples, and came across this episode, which amused me:

The Adventure of the Scarlet Blush
Mystery Managed (The non-Holmesian conclusion)
Scarlet Blush, Conclusion (the more appropriate conclusion)

Now I'm thinking I need more fictional detectives around here.

Bizzarria!

It's not hard to see why they named it "Bizzarria":

The Bizzarria Story (Home Citrus Growers)

I've seen a number chimeral citrus specimens before, but I've never seen the Bizzarria before. Apparently it's a graft hybrid of a sour orange and a citron. (Another much less spectacular citrus graft hybrid, Citrus neo-aurantium, can be seen here.).

This reminds me a little bit of the account of the "Sweet and Sour" apple in Apples of New York. Described as a probable graft hybrid, this apple had ridged fruit, with the ribs green and the space in between yellow. When eaten, the flesh in the green areas is tart and acidic, while that beneath the yellow skin is sweet and sub-acid.

Update: The more I poke around, the more I realize that the Home Citrus Growers website is pretty nifty as a whole. I'll add a link in the sidebar, too.