Wild to Shelf: The Evolution of Our Fruits

You don’t see grocery store fruit in the wild. 🍓

That’s because we’ve have been breeding them for thousands of years.

Let’s look at how “manufactured” your tasty fruit bowl really is. 👇🏻

Maize.

Maize (corn) started as a Mexican grass called teosinte.

Teosinte was more like rice than what we think of today as corn.

Teosinte is not edible due to its hard outer casing, though some evidence suggests the stalks were consumed for its sweet juice.

Watermelon.

Delicious.

92% water. Seedless versions (+ fewer seed vers) are the market winners today.

Watermelon seeds have been found in a 5000-year-old site in Libya.

This early painting by Giovanni Stanchi showed watermelon with much less red flesh and more seeds.

Banana.

Evolved from two wild species:

1. an okra-like pod bred to produce seedless fruit

2. musa balbisiana, with hard large seeds 

Imagine a banana with seeds in it 🤔

Apples.

Asian wild apple is native to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and China, and is believed to be the forefather to modern domesticated apples.

It is small and sour.

Strawberries.

This is one of the few exceptions where the wild version is sweeter than modern versions.

Wild strawberries still grow today, are much smaller than grocery store varieties, and are sweeter.

Modern strawberries are bred to maintain look, shelf-life, and flavor.

Peaches.

There are three identified species of wild peaches, and all grew in China.

They were around 40% pit and 60% flesh.

Peaches today are 10% pit and 90% flesh and 5% sweeter, 30% juicer, and 64 times bigger.

Humans have been breeding crops for over 10,000 years to produce desirable traits like size, taste, pest resistance, and yield.

Modern fruit, particularly, is designed to be as sweet as possible while looking good on display.

Cuz that’s what consumers want. 🤷