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It might seem strange to think that the common apple was not originally a universal fruit, but in fact it has its roots in one specific region of the world.
The ancestor of the domestic apple is the Malus sieversii, which grows wilds of the Tian Shan mountains in Kazakhstan.In the early 20th century, biologist Nikolai Vavilov first traced the apple genome back to a grove near Almaty, a small town whose wild apples are nearly indistinguishable from the Golden Deliciouses found at grocery stores today. Vavilov visited Almaty and was astounded to find apple trees growing wild, densely entangled and unevenly spaced, a phenomenon found nowhere else in the world.
Scientists…
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