- Cranberries are a staple in U.S. households at Thanksgiving – but how did this bog dweller end up on holiday tables?
- But as a plant scientist, I’ve learned much about cranberries’ ancestry from their botany and genomics.
New on the plant breeding scene
- Humans have cultivated sorghum for some 5,500 years, corn for around 8,700 years and cotton for about 5,000 years.
- In contrast, cranberries were domesticated around 200 years ago – but people were eating the berries before that.
- Today, Wisconsin produces roughly 60% of the U.S. cranberry harvest, followed by Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey.
A flexible and adaptable plant
- Like roses, lilies and daffodils, cranberry flowers are hermaphroditic, which means they contain both male and female parts.
- The flower’s resemblance to the beak of a bird earned the cranberry its original name, the “craneberry.”
- They can also be propagated sexually, by planting seeds, or asexually, through rooting vine cuttings.
- This is important for growers because seed-based propagation allows for higher genetic diversity, which can translate to things like increased disease resistance or more pest tolerance.
- These pockets serve a biological role: They enable the berries to float down rivers and streams to disperse their seeds.
Reading cranberry DNA
- The cranberry is a diploid, which means that each cell contains one set of chromosomes from the maternal parent and one set from the paternal parent.
- It has 24 chromosomes, and its genome size is less than one-tenth that of the human genome.
- Insights like these help scientists better understand where potentially valuable genes might be located in the cranberry genome.
- Researchers are developing molecular markers – tools to determine where certain genes or sequences of interest reside within a genome – to help determine the best combinations of genes from different varieties of cranberry that can enhance desired traits.
Ripe at the right time
- Fresh cranberries are ready to harvest from mid-September through mid-November, so Thanksgiving falls within that perfect window for eating them.
- In recent decades, the cranberry industry has branched out into juices, snacks and other products in pursuit of year-round markets.
Serina DeSalvio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
