Diversity of cabbage species explained
Monday, November 7, 2011 - 10:30
in Biology & Nature
The cabbage family is well-represented in the vegetable section of the supermarket. The cauliflower, red cabbage and broccoli found there were all bred from the cabbage species Brassica oleraciea. Its sister species Brassica rapa produced vegetables such as the Chinese cabbage and the turnip. But it is not clear quite where this large natural variety came from. Plant scientists guess that there is an extremely large genetic variation in cabbage plants. The genome of the Chinese cabbage, published in this month's Nature Genetics, supports this explanation.
