Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial beginning of
the summer picnic and cookout season in the U.S., which means it’s also
the start of watermelon-eating around the country. The giant fruit
comes ready to serve a hot, hungry group and is so associated with
America’s three big summer holidays that one would think it originated
here. One would be wrong. In fact, a new study has used watermelon DNA
to trace its ancestry and found that it’s not even 1/64th Native
American. Where did the watermelon first move from the bitter wild
variety to the sweet red fruit we know and love? You’ll be surprised.
Pick a country and place your bets now.
“With some 197.8 million tons in 2017, watermelon, Citrullus lanatus,
is among the World’s most important crops, yet its area of origin and
domestication have remained unclear, with competing hypotheses favoring
South Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, or the Nile valley.”
According to the study, published in bioRxiv,
the origin of domesticated watermelon was a mystery that piqued the
interest of Susanne Renner, a botanist and professor of biology at the
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Renner told New Scientist
she had heard about a depiction on the wall of an ancient Egyptian tomb
of something that looked like a modern watermelon and learned that
another 3500-year-old tomb, opened in the 19th century, contained
watermelon leaves that had been placed on a mummy. Those leaves ended up
in the possession of botanist Joseph Hooker, a close friend of Charles
Darwin, who locked them in a case at Kew Gardens in London where they’ve
remained ever since. Mark Nesbitt, the Kew Garden official who agreed
to give Renner a sample of one leaf, confirmed the case hadn’t been
opened since 1876.
“We generated extensive nuclear and plastid genomic data
from a 3500-year-old leaf from a Pharaonic sarcophagus and performed
genome skimming for representatives of all other Citrullus species to
compare key genes involved in fruit bitterness and color.”
DNA sequencing by team member Guillaume Chomicki showed that the gene
that controls the production of bitterness in watermelons was turned
off, meaning the leaf came from a sweet fruit. Another gene that had
mutated and was turned off controlled an enzyme that controls the red
pigment lycopene, meaning this sweet fruit was red. Which means …
“… that 18th Dynasty Egyptians were cultivating domesticated watermelon by 3500 years ago.”
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner! Pay off anyone who placed a bet on
ancient Egypt. Does this mean the pharaohs had picnics and ate
watermelons with their barbecued camel burgers, yam salad and beer?
Possibly, but it’s a safe bet that Americans have developed the biggest
and sweetest watermelons and would definitely win a seed-spitting
contest. USA! USA!
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