The Jurassic Park of seeds

June 15, 2008 - 6:03 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, Food, General, Technology 

Israeli agrotech experts like to break the bounds of science every now and then – well actually pretty frequently. So it should come as no surprise that a team of Israeli researchers has now resurrected a 2,000-year-old date tree by using a seed excavated from Masada.

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What a fun project this must have been.

Apparently the seed was one of three discovered at the ancient Jewish fortress in the 1960s and was radiocarbon-dated to the 1st century BCE – AD73 to be exact – around the time the Romans laid siege to Masada.

Three years ago, a team from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies bathed the seeds in fertilizer and enzyme-rich solutions and then planted them.

Lo and behold, about four weeks later one of the seeds sprouted, making it the oldest germinated seed in the world. Today’s it’s a four-foot tall Judean palm sapling called Methuselah –named by the scientists after the oldest person in the Hebrew bible.

The main researcher, Elaine Solowey – who was featured on ISRAEL21c some months ago and specializes in reviving extinct plants, said: “I really never thought we would get life out of this group of seeds because when we first acquired them, they looked so dry. Most of the seeds were dead and then suddenly, we saw that we could get life out of this one.”

According to the scientists this region was once covered in thick forests of Judean palms reaching up top 80 feet high, but they have all become extinct. Methuselah is the only living Judean date palm in the world.

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The researchers hope that by reviving the plant they can study its medicinal uses. It’s also got quite a bit of history behind it – researchers believe the seeds were most likely the remnants of fruits stored or eaten by the Zealot Jewish community living in Masada at that time.

Perhaps I watch too much Sci-Fi. Although I think this is absolutely fascinating, there’s also part of me that finds it faintly scary.

A resurrected seed… what comes next?

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