USDA, SCOTT BAUER
All present-day citrus trees arose from a common ancestor 15 million years ago that underwent three big waves of evolutionary change to create today’s lemons, limes, kumquats, and oranges, according to a study published this week (April 14) in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Researchers from the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF) and the Intituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias in Spain sequenced the chloroplast genomes of 30 species of the genus Citrus and compared them to previously published genomes of two mandarin and two pomelo plants. They found that the citrus family could be divided into three groups that first emerged between 6.3 million and 7.5 million years ago: citron and Australian varieties, micrantha and pomelo, and mandarin and papeda, which includes such fruits as ...
