[Sca-cooks] Watermelon mentions 2

[Johnna Holloway]

Ancient Citrullus DNA-unlocking Domestication Events

Gábor Gyulai1,2,3, Luther Waters3, Fenny Dane3

Seed remains of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus lanatus) from the Middle Ages were excavated from two sites, Debrecen, Hungary (the 13th-14th Century a.d.) and Budapest, Hungary (the 15th Century a.d.). Seed remains were processed by floatation followed by seed sorting and identification in the laboratory. After seed morphological analysis aDNAs were extracted and then analyzed at eleven microsatellite (SSRs) loci with a final aim of sequence recovery and phenotype reconstruction. For comparative analysis, an herbarium sample from the 19th cent. a.d. (Pannonhalma, Hungary) and forty-four current varieties were used. Molecular dendrograms based on microsatellite analysis revealed that middle age samples are close to current varieties with red flesh colour, which indicate the preferential cultivation of red-flesh and not yellow- flesh watermelon in the Middle Ages in Hungary. The 170-yr-old herbarium sample showed close molecular similarity to citron melon (Citrullus lanatus citroides), which also reflects the importance of citron melon as fodder in the Middle-Ages in Hungary. 


http://www.fulbright.hu/book3/gyulaigabor.pdf

Johnnae