Emily Kwong
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
54,000 genes, that is a lot to map.
Which, honestly, sort of overwhelming, but also means there's so much possibility for scientists to explore.
This is Ben Gutierrez.
He's a plant geneticist and a former student of Susan's.
And his job is basically to preserve that genetic diversity of apples.
In fact, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture has an entire orchard just dedicated to that preservation.
And Ben gave me a tour.
Emily, this orchard was huge, like 5,000 trees, and each one of them is totally unique.
Some of the apples were huge and round and green, and some of them were tiny, so cute, and so red that they were almost purple.
I've never seen so many different types of apples.
This work has such longevity, like it is about looking to the future of apple making.
Yeah, it's like this huge archive, like a Noah's Ark of apples from all over the world.
That one was really bad.
But it could carry some trait.