Sweet orange's parents and mechanism for producing vitamin C revealed in its draft genome sequence
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - 07:30
in Biology & Nature
The sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, has long dominated fruit production worldwide. Yet attempts to study this fruit's genetics and improve its desirable traits have proved difficult because it reproduces asexually and seedlings are nearly identical to the mother plant. Plant biologists had even failed to determine with certainty which fruits had been crossed to produce the sweet orange, over 2,000 years ago in China. An international research team, including members from the A*STAR Genome Institute Singapore (GIS), has now broken the deadlock by sequencing the genome of the sweet orange. The team has also revealed the fruit's parentage: pummelo, which is similar to grapefruit, and mandarin, a small and easy-peeling orange.