Apple Gene for Red Color Found

FiReaNGeL writes "Researchers have located the gene that controls the red color of apples — a discovery that may lead to bright new apple varieties. 'The red color in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits,' says the leader of the CSIRO. By identifying master genes that were activated by light, they were able to pinpoint the gene that controls the formation of anthocyanins in apples. 'As well as giving apples their rosy red hue, anthocyanins are also antioxidants with healthy attributes, giving us plenty of reasons to study how the biochemical pathway leading to apple color is regulated,' researchers said."

Comments

Re:The Terrible Tinkerer.

[metlin]

Why not?

It is the inherent human curiosity to do something just because.

The insatiable curiosity, the urge to do something, to tamper, to tinker for no reason except that we can.

If we asked why for everything that has happened in the past several thousand years, we'd not be where we are today.

The best apples I have ever tasted

[jpardey]

My family is heavily into organic food, and now that I am out of the house, I still try to eat stuff grown reasonably well, for taste and health reasons. But anyway, back at my old house, there were a number of apple trees in the yard when we moved in. One tree always has apples that look like they are covered in dust. The other trees don't. Blemishes and bumps are common, along with the occasional worm. Nothing in the supermarket, "organic" or otherwise, compares. Firm, not full of water, not ridiculously crispy, and have more of the taste of an apple than any other apple I have tried.

The way an apple looks matters little to me. Sure, the inability to wipe the dirty appearance off the apples put me off at first, but I now know that a bright red apple will taste more like water than anything else. And now thanks to the discovery of this gene, mega-orchards can grow good looking crops with far less effort, fertilizer, or taste, I would expect.

Things like this make me consider dropping out of the sciences. Every advancement seems to merely be another opportunity to cut back something else, and get away with less bottom-line. Still, maybe with the extra anti-oxidant thing, it could be worth it.

Re:The best apples I have ever tasted

[Rick17JJ]

Manipulating the genetics to get redder apples means that color will be even less of an indication of ripeness than it is now. The Delicious variety of apples in the grocery store are always bright red but usually not very good tasting. I once heard that the Delicious apples were bred more for color than taste. If I remember correctly, I also also once read about apples and possibly even salmon being gassed to alter color. Is that correct? I don't know if that is commonly done or not.

At least here in Arizona, I have noticed that the organic apples at a local health food store typically seem to taste slightly better than the ones at the grocery stores. Some (but not all) of those apples also say that they are locally grown. Some of the apples at the health food store seem to have more nicks and scars and less uniform coloring. Because of that I have been relying less on color or freedom from nicks and scars as any kind of indication of quality. I have been eating apples for about 50 years now and if I remember correctly, 30 years ago color was once a good indication of ripeness and quality.

At the health food store, they were recently also selling a very old variety of tomatoes from a long time ago that is rarely grown any more. That variety of tomatoes came in various shades of red, dull red, orange and yellow. Some even had slight greenish tinges, but they were good tasting for store bought tomatoes.

By the way, a local farm here, has been selling chickens and turkeys that were raised without hormones and given more room to wander around. They were also fresher because they were locally grown here in Arizona. They always tasted much better than the ones from the grocery stores. Unfortunately, in recent years, the government has reduced the water rights to the point that Young's Farm is going out of business. They took away more of their water rights, each year, even though they were a popular local attraction and had been farming there since 1947. Developers who purchased the land are planning to put a housing development on the land instead. They were the only ones that raised turkeys in Arizona.

Re:The best apples I have ever tasted

[d3ac0n]

How retarded is that ?

Not at all really.

You have to consider that there are very good reasons why food (or anything else, for that matter) is shipped internationally. Cost. It's simply cheaper to expend the time and energy going halfway around the world to get your produce than it is to get it locally. Likely it has alot to do with the fact that the cost of producing the same food in a nearly 3rd world country is significantly less than it is to produce it locally. Also, as many of these countries are not heavily developed (as in land development) there is plenty of low-cost land available to farm on. In Europe, where there has been heavy development for literally hundreds if not thousands of years, the arable land available is very small and very very expensive to produce on. (It's less of an issue in America, as it has large tracts of arable flat land in the midwest.) So this makes farming in Europe very expensive. So expensive that it's actually cheaper to sail around the world and bring food back from far off countries.

Of course, as many of the 3rd world nations begin to throw off the shackles of dictatorships and communism and develop viable capitalist economies they will begin to enter the 2nd and 1st worlds, which steadily makes it less and less profitable to purchase food from them. Some areas will retain thier agricultural base, but many will likely switch to industrial or high-tech as time goes on. This a natural and inevitable process, which will eventually lead us back to producing more food locally as the costs equalize. Of course, this process will take decades if not hundreds of years to happen, so there shouldn't be any serious economic upheaval because of it.

The only current threat to this process is the spread of radical Islam, and the 7th century ideologies it espouses. While Islamofascists seem to be adept at adopting new technologies to their own ends, their violent and oppressive ideology prevents them from truly capitalizing on progressive and democratic concepts and leaves them in an economic straightjacket. If this Ideology takes hold in too many 3rd world countries we could see a permanent 3rd world develop. Let us all hope that does not happen.

Re:The best apples I have ever tasted

[pafrusurewa]

You do realize that Europe produces way too much food and spends money destroying said food surplus? And that in the EU (and the US for that matter) there are huge subsidies? And that farmers are paid for _not_ producing food?

I recently read a report in which a farmer in Ghana complained that he can't compete with cheap and imported Dutch onions because of EU subsidies.

Re:Does that mean

[spacedsteve]

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