Kate Evans

That's what a tree wants to do.

That's why we have an apple.

And so the evolutionary perspective of that tree is, well, you have to make the apple attractive for people to eat or for animals to eat.

So those seeds get spread.

So in the big scheme of things, then, yeah, you know, an apple is an apple.

We want to be able to eat it.

But certainly from the wild apples that were around in Europe, most of those are very small crab apple types.

And that's not what we're seeing and we want to eat.

We want something that's a little tastier than that.

Absolutely, yeah.

So the sweet apple origins are mostly from the sort of Kazakhstan area, that part of the world.

Yeah, really interestingly, the perspective is that they spread through the Silk Route, you know, that whole sort of trafficking of materials that moved across into Europe.

And that's really where we got the sweet apples from.

And still...

The wild type of apples, Malasaversii, is the species that is out in Kazakhstan, still in forests there, are typically a little larger than the crabapple types that we know, and they're often quite sweet.

Well, yeah, I like your term, Nick.

We just do that.

Yes.

We just do that.

Well, technically, the actual process of cross-hybridization is not difficult.