Nutrition What makes apples healthy and delicious?

What makes apples healthy and delicious?
As Eve bites into the apple, she may have screwed humanity's access to paradise, but instinctively she's resorted to one of the healthiest foods. Since then, a lot has changed, even with the apple. Whereas until a few years ago the breeding progress through crossing breeding had to be achieved more or less in blind flight, today genome research plays an important role in creating more transparency for breeding decisions. Not only characteristics such as shape, color and taste are coded in certain places of the apple's own genes, but also the content of health-promoting ingredients.

Apples contain valuable fiber, which has a positive effect on digestion and intestinal health. (Image: Syda Productions / fotolia.com)

For many years scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have been trying to breed new, better varieties. For example, the popular strain "Elstar" comes from this researcher's forge. Now, in collaboration with an international consortium, scientists have been able to decipher the apple genome more precisely and comprehensively using a specific apple variety. Now that you know up to 93 percent of the construction plans, this significantly contributes to more overview and transparency for the further breeding of varieties. It unraveled previously uncharacterized parts of the genome that could help in the future to positively alter certain features of the apple.

Depending on how the breeding goal is defined, for example, the vitamin content or other nutritional or health-related properties could be favorably influenced. Thus, completely new varieties can be created or existing varieties can be optimized. For example, plant breeders had previously been able to develop the "Santana" strain, which is also well tolerated by people with moderate apple allergy.
Such or similar goals could be more easily realized in the future. Funded u.a. from the European Commission, the publication of this high-quality genome decoding can help to make apple production of the future more sustainable - also from an economic perspective.
Friederike Heidenhof, bzfe