Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The growing of apples
and pears
The history of apple and pear growing
Apples and pears in the wild and in prehistory
The genus
Malus
has, according to most authorities,
species and
several subspecies of so-called crab apples. These species are found in the wild
almost continuously throughout temperate Eurasia and North America. The
primary centre of diversity appears to be within a region stretching from Asia
Minor to the western provinces of China ( Janick
et al.
,
to
; Juniper
et al.
,
,
), with
fruits ranging from small and unattractive to ones similar to the traditional
cultivated eating apples.
There is evidence that the fruits of apples were collected as food by pre-
historic man. Carbonized fruits dating from
). Forests of wild apples are still found in this region (Roach,
BC were found at ΒΈ atal
Huyuk in Anatolia and remains of both sour crab apples and a larger form,
which may have been cultivated, were discovered in prehistoric lake dwellings
in Switzerland. It seems likely that apples moved with human migration along
the Old Silk Roads linking western China with the Near East and Danube
valley even in Neolithic and Bronze Age times. These routes passed through
Almaten (Alma Ata) in eastern Kazakhstan and the northern slopes of the
Tien Shan Mountains, now thought to be the possible centre of origin of the
domestic apple ( Juniper
et al.
,
).
Cultivated pears appear to have arisen from three centres of diversity: a
Chinese centre where forms of
Pyrus pyrifolia
and
P. ussuriensis
are grown, a
centre in the Caucasus Mountains and Asia Minor where the domesticated
forms of
P. communis
arose, and a Central Asian centre where
P. communis
and
its hybrids occur (Vavilov,
). Asian or Japanese pears are
thought to have been domesticated in prehistoric times from wild
P. pyrifolia
and to have been cultivated in China for at least
; Bell
et al.
,
years (Lombard and
Westwood,
).
