The shallow domestication bottleneck of strawberry: recovering secondary metabolite-based defenses from wild Fragaria species
Sara Postacchini, Patricia Pacheco-Ruiz, Sonia Osorio, José G. Vallarino, Bruno Mezzetti, Luca Mazzoni · 2026
Read The shallow domestication bottleneck of strawberry: recovering secondary metabolite-based defenses from wild Fragaria species by Sara Postacchini, Patricia Pacheco-Ruiz, Sonia Osorio, José G. Vallarino, Bruno Mezzetti, Luca Mazzoni (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13341462.txt.
Description
Wild strawberries hold defenses that breeding drained away, argue Sara Postacchini's team, in their 2026 review. Farm strawberry has a breeding history of only about 300 years, far shorter than wheat or apple, so the chemical losses from selection can still be counted and perhaps undone.
Selection for color and size cut secondary metabolites that fight infection. New genome references and multi-omics tools now map these compounds across species. Screening of 18 germplasms found F. nilgerrensis resistant to gray mold, and wild relatives like F. chiloensis keep genes for protective terpenes, flavonoids, and ellagitannins. Bringing them back could harden farm crops.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sara Postacchini, Patricia Pacheco-Ruiz, Sonia Osorio, José G. Vallarino, Bruno Mezzetti, Luca Mazzoni |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 23934 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |