Passage II

SOCIAL SCIENCE: Passage A is adapted from the book Apple: A Global History by Erika Janik (©2011 by Erika Janik). Passage B is adapted from the article “The Fatherland of Apples” by Gary Nabhan (©2008 by The Orion Society).

Passage A by Erika Janik

In early September of 1929, Nikolai Vavilov, tamed Russian plant explorer and botanist, arrived in the central Asian crossroads of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. Climbing up the Zailijskei Alatau slopes of the Tian Shan mountains separating Kazakhstan from China, Vavilov found thickets of wild apples stretching in every direction, an extensive forest of fruit coloured russet red, creamy yellow, and vibrant pink. Nowhere else in the world do apples grow thickly as a forest or with such incredible diversity. Amazed by what he saw, Vavilov wrote: ‘I could see with my own eyes that I had stumbled upon the centre of origin for the apple.’

With extraordinary prescience and few facts, Vavilov suggested that the wild apples he had seen growing in the Tian Shan were in fact the ancestors of the modern apple. He tracked the whole process of domestication to the mountains near Alma-Ata, where the wild apples looked awfully similar to the apples found at the local grocery. Unfortunately, Vavilov’s theory would remain mostly unknown for decades.

Exactly where the apple came from had long been a matter of contention and discussion among people who study plant origins. Vavilov, imprisoned by Joseph Stalin in 1940 for work in plant genetics that challenged Stalin’s beliefs, died in a Leningrad prison in 1943. Only after the fall of communism in Russia did Vavilov’s theory, made more than half a century earlier, become widely recognized.

As Vavilov predicted, it’s now believed that all of the apples known today are direct descendents of the wild apples that evolved in Kazakhstan. Apples do not comprise all of Kazakhstan’s plant bounty, however. At least 157 other plant species found in Kazakhstan are either direct precursors or close wild relatives of domesticated crops, including 90 per cent of all cultivated temperate fruits. The name of Kazakhstan’s largest city, Alma-Ata, or Almaty as it is known today, even translates as ‘Father of Apples’ or, according to some, ‘where the apples are’. So this news about the apple’s origins was probably no surprise to residents, particularly in towns where apple seedlings are known to grow up through the cracks in the pavements. The apple has been evolving in Central Asia for upwards of 4.5 million years.

Passage B by Gary Nabhan

Nikolai Vavilov is widely regarded as the world’s greatest plant explorer, for he made over 250,000 seed, fruit, and tuber collections on five continents. Kazakh conservationist Tatiana Salova credits him with first recognizing that Kazakhstan was the center of origin and diversity for apples. “It is not surprising," she concedes, “that when Vavilov first came to Kazakhstan to look at plants he was so amazed. Nowhere else in the world do apples grow as a forest. That is one reason why he stated that this is probably where the apple was born, this was its birthing grounds.”

Discerning where a crop originated and where the greatest portion of its genetic diversity remains extant may seem esoteric to the uninitiated. But knowing where exactly our food comes from—geographically, culturally, and genetically—is of paramount importance to the rather small portion of our own species that regularly concerns itself with the issue of food security. The variety of foods that we keep in our fields, orchards, and, secondarily, in our seed banks is critically important in protecting our food supply from plagues, crop diseases, catastrophic weather, and political upheavals, Vavilov himself was personally motivated to become an agricultural scientist by witnessing several famines during the czarist era of Russia. He hoped that by combining a more diverse seed portfolio with knowledge from both traditional farmers and collaborating scientists, the number of Russian families suffering from hunger might be reduced.

In a very real sense, the forests of wild foragers and the orchards of traditional farmers in such centers of crop diversity are the wellsprings of diversity that plant breeders, pathologists, and entomologists return to every time our society whittles the resilience in our fields and orchards down to its breaking point.

And whittle away we have done. Here in North America, according to apple historian Dan Bussey, some 16,000 apple varieties have been named and nurtured over the last four centuries. By 1904, however, the identities and sources of only 7,098 of those varieties could be discerned by USDA scientist W. H. Ragan. Since then, some 6,121 apple varieties—86.2 percent of Ragan’s 1904 inventory—have been lost from nursery catalogs, farmers’ markets, and from the American table.