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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow climate change could kill the red apple
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191119-how-climate-change-could-kill-the-red-appleHow climate change could kill the red apple
By Veronique Greenwood
20th November 2019
The archetypal apple is no two ways about it red. There may be yellow apples or green apples in the grocery store too. In some places, you might even find varieties that are striped or mottled with a profusion of hues, like the gorgeous Coxs Orange Pippin.
But red or occasionally, pure, sharp Granny Smith green is the colour of apples in most alphabet books. Its an interesting detail, because apples were not always so resolutely monochrome.
The ancestors of the modern apple were wild trees growing in what is now Kazakhstan, on the western slope of the mountains which border western China. Today, wild apple trees still grow there, perfuming the air with fallen fruit and feeding the bears that lumber through the forest, although the wild apples numbers have shrunk by 90% in the last 50 years thanks to human development and their future is uncertain.
The fruits range from pale yellow to cherry red and spring green, but red is not generally more prominent than the other colours. (One apple-loving traveller, Beck Lowe, reports that ironically a commercial Kazakh orchard, like orchards everywhere around the world, is growing Red Delicious and Golden Delicious, apples of American origin.)
Apple colour arises from the expression level of certain genes in the skin, scientists have found. David Chagne, a geneticist at Plant and Food Research in New Zealand, explains that sets of enzymes work together to turn certain molecules into pigments called anthocyanins, the same class of substances that give purple sweet potatoes, grapes and plums their colour.
The levels of these enzymes are controlled by a transcription factor a protein that regulates how much a gene is expressed called MYB10, such that the more MYB10 there is, the redder the skin will generally be. In fact, one study found that in apples with red stripes, MYB10 levels were higher in the striped portions of the skin.
Intriguingly, colour also depends on temperature. To get an apple thats fully red, temperatures must stay cool, Chagne says, because if they climb to above about 40C (104F), MYB10 and anthocyanin levels crash. In the Pyrenees region of Spain, he and his colleagues found normally vividly red striped apples were completely pale after a particularly hot July. As temperatures warm, he suggests, it could become more difficult for apples to turn red.
(snip)
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How climate change could kill the red apple (Original Post)
nitpicker
Nov 2019
OP
But enzymes and anthocyanins are too complicated for Republicans if oil company profit is targetted.
Bernardo de La Paz
Nov 2019
#1
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)1. But enzymes and anthocyanins are too complicated for Republicans if oil company profit is targetted.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)2. Any apples sold in America will be dyed red, so it's no problem!
Just like the fresh oranges are dyed orange, etc.