The bracteatus pineapple genome and domestication of clonally propagated crops (OA) (Nature Genetics)

You probably know well the sweet and yellow “smooth cayenne” pineapple (Ananas comosus). This fruit was domesticated a few millennia ago in South America. Pineapple domestication targeted fiber production, color, and sugar accumulation. How it happened remained mysterious. To resolve this mystery, Chen et al. resequenced 89 accessions of these clonal plants. They found a domestication history a bit more complex than expected. They did find the signature of a severe domestication bottleneck. But they also found evidence of ancient and recent admixture. Sexual recombination did play a role in generating the diversity of the pineapples. Then, human interventions played with that diversity to get to the fruit that we know now. To finish this recipe, let’s add some somatic mutations and abundant transposable elements. Enjoy, your pineapple is ready. (Summary by Celine Caseys) Nature Genetics: 10.1038/s41588-019-0506-8