[ChrisMarshallNY]

I remember reading in Guns, Germs and Steel, that they could figure out how every crop originated.

Except almonds.

Apparently, all wild almonds are deadly poisonous, and they couldn't figure out how they moved to the non-poisonous domestic variety.

[defrost]

Twenty two years after publication, more is known:

  A study published this week in the journal Science sequenced the almond genome and shows that a single genetic mutation "turned off" the ability to make the toxic compound thousands of years ago — a key step before humans could domesticate almonds.

  "Wild almonds are bitter and lethal, even in tiny amounts, because [they have] this amygdalin," says study co-author Stefano Pavan, a professor in agricultural genetics and plant breeding at the University of Bari in Italy. (Pavan's primary co-author was Raquel Sánchez-Pérez, a senior biochemistry researcher at CEBAS-CSIC, an agricultural research center in Spain.) "This mutation is very important because it's the mutation that allowed almond domestication."

How Almonds Went From Deadly To Delicious (2019) - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/13/732160949/ho...

Mutation of a bHLH transcription factor allowed almond domestication - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav8197