Using genomic data, researchers unlock history of North African date palm
(PHYSorg.com Biology)

Genome analysis reveals that North African date palms are a hybrid between cultivated date palms from the Middle East and a different, wild species of palm that grows on the island of Crete and in small areas of Southern Turkey. These findings, the result of research at NYU Abu Dhabi`s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (NYUAD CGSB), shed new light on the evolutionary history of one of the earliest domesticated tree crops in the world, which remains a major fruit crop in North Africa and the Middle East.