Pineapple genome offers insights into plant domestication process
Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The newly sequenced pineapple genome has offered researchers fresh insights into the plant domestication process. Pineapple varieties are grown for a variety of purposes: for fiber, as an ornamental and, most famously, as a delicious fruit. Scientists at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois sequenced the genome of the red pineapple and compared it to the genomes of several other cultivars. Their efforts -- detailed Monday in the journal Nature Genetics -- revealed evidence supporting their hypothesis, that pineapples can be domesticated in a single step, sans seeds, using cuttings and other methods. "We have chosen major pineapple cultivars worldwide ... to test our hypothesis of 'one-step operation' in domestication of clonally ...
