上期答案
A man of lofty moral integrity is one who maintains the pure heart of a newborn baby.
大人者，不失其赤子之心者也。——《孟子.离娄下》
本期内容
早上好，读者朋友们，今天分享的文章选自《科学美国人》。想象一下，四季更迭，无论身处何方，你的味蕾总能享受到那份来自大自然的馈赠——芳香四溢、多汁甘甜的苹果。这不仅仅是味觉上的盛宴，更是人类智慧与现代科技共同编织的美味传奇。我们正置身于一个前所未有的苹果黄金时代，一个让人垂涎欲滴、美味无穷的新纪元。回溯千禧年之交，谁能预见到今日这番景象？那时的我们，或许只能在特定季节，于少数几个品种中寻觅苹果的甘甜。而今，科技的力量彻底颠覆了这一传统，让“全年无休”的苹果盛宴成为可能。从寒冷北国的红富士，到温暖南疆的嘎啦果，从酸甜适中的阿克苏，到清脆可口的皇家嘎啦，品种繁多，风味各异，满足你对苹果的所有幻想。
We Are Living in a Golden Age of Apples
我们正处于苹果的黄金时代
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We are living in a golden age of apples, a time of delicious, diverse, mouth-watering abundance that we could barely have imagined at the turn of the millennium. How did we get to a time when most of us, most of the year, can eat our choice of fragrant, juicy, sweet, crisp apples?
diverse /daɪˈvɜːrs/ adj.各式各样的
at the turn of 在……的转折点
crisp /krɪsp/ adj. 爽口的；脆的
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Many of us remember that the U.S. apple market was dominated for decades by one variety: Red Delicious, which is a bold name for a bland apple. It is certainly red, with a lovely rich jewel color and a handsome shape. But delicious? The main alternative was Golden Delicious, a perfectly fine but similarly uninspiring yellow variety. Tart, green Granny Smiths, which were propagated in Australia in 1868 by an orchardist named Maria Ann Sherwood Smith, started taking a decent share of the market in the U.S. in the 1980s.
bold adj. 大胆的
propagate v.繁殖；传播
bland /blænd/ adj. 平淡的
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许多人还记得，美国苹果市场曾数十年被一种品种主宰：红元帅苹果，这个名字听起来虽响亮，但苹果本身却相当平淡无奇。它确实呈红色，有着宝石般鲜艳丰富的色彩和俊美的外形。但说它“美味”？恐怕不尽然。当时的主要替代品是金冠苹果，这是一种相当不错但同样缺乏亮点的黄色品种。至于酸甜的青苹果——格兰尼史密斯苹果，则由澳大利亚一位名叫玛丽亚·安·舍伍德·史密斯的果园主于1868年培育而成，自20世纪80年代起，这种苹果在美国市场上逐渐占据了一席之地。
Today’s cultivated apples are produced by the tree Malus domestica. Its ancestor is Malus sieversii, which still grows wild in what is now Kazakhstan and bears small and variable fruit. Farmers began domesticating apples sometime between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago in the Tian Shan Mountains of Central Asia, according to genetic analyses. These cultivated varieties then quickly spread along the Silk Road trade route, where breeders crossed them with another wild species, Malus sylvestris. The ancient Romans developed techniques for apple grafting (more on that in a sec) and propagated the trees across their empire.
bear /ber/ v.开花，结（果实）
graft /ɡræft/ v. 嫁接；移植
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当今栽培的苹果源自苹果树Malus domestica。其祖先是仍生长在现今哈萨克斯坦境内的小果多变种的塞威士苹果（Malus sieversii）。根据基因分析，农民大约在1万至4千年前，于中亚的天山山脉开始栽培苹果。这些栽培品种随后迅速沿着丝绸之路贸易路线传播，育种者在那里将它们与另一种野生种——森林苹果（Malus sylvestris）进行杂交。古罗马人开发了苹果嫁接技术（稍后会详细介绍）并将苹果树传播到整个罗马帝国。
Honeycrisp has a “disruptive trait,” says Chris Gottschalk, a geneticist who works at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research station in Kearneysville, W.V. (his favorite apples: Honeycrisp and Golden Russet). Honeycrisp’s texture—the crispness—had never been combined with a high-acidity, high-sugar apple, he says. “That really struck North American consumers specifically well,” Gottschalk says. As its popularity grew, it went from being largely a “u-pick” fruit to becoming regionally available in groceries, and now it is the third most produced apple in the U.S.
geneticist /dʒəˈnetɪsɪst/ n. 遗传学者
texture /ˈtekstʃər/ n. 质地，纹理
u-pick 自助采摘
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蜜脆苹果具有“颠覆性特征”，美国农业部西弗吉尼亚州科尔尼斯维尔研究站的遗传学家克里斯·戈特沙尔克表示（他最喜欢的苹果是蜜脆苹果和金褐色苹果）。他说，蜜脆苹果的质地（脆度）从未与高酸度、高糖分的苹果结合在一起。“这确实打动了北美消费者，”。随着蜜脆苹果越来越受欢迎，它从一种“自己摘”的水果变成了在当地杂货店可以买到的水果，现在它是美国产量第三大的苹果。
One of the great advances in apple breeding in the past few decades has been the widespread use of dwarf rootstocks. These trees mature quickly at a smaller size than traditional apple trees but can still support a lot of grafts. A greater proportion of energy can then go into growing apples rather than developing thick, tall, gnarly trees. Breeders can plant the trees closer together to make test plots more efficient, and boughs grafted to a dwarf rootstock start producing apples two to three years earlier than those grafted to a traditional rootstock.
graft n. 嫁接；受贿
test plot 试验田
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过去几十年来，苹果育种的一大进步是广泛使用矮化砧木。这些树比传统苹果树小，但成熟速度快，但仍能支撑大量嫁接枝。这样，就可以将更多的精力用于种植苹果，而不是培育粗壮、高大、粗糙的树。育种者可以将树木种植得更紧密，以提高试验田的效率，嫁接到矮化砧木上的树枝比嫁接到传统砧木上的树枝早两到三年开始结苹果。
Journal：scientificamerican
Title：We Are Living in a Golden Age of Apples(October 24, 2024)
Category：Food
END
写作句式积累
The work that my predecessors and academics have done has laid the groundwork to rapidly accelerate innovation in apples.
lay the groundwork to ... 为...打下基础
我的前辈和学者们所做的工作为加速苹果的创新奠定了基础。
翻译练习
Apple breeders continue to test new varieties for five to 15 years after the initial taste test to screen for disease resistance, heat resilience, winter hardiness, the ability to bear every year (some bear only every other year) and other traits.
翻译练习，欢迎大家文末留言打卡，下期推送文章公布答案哟，一起阅外刊学英语吧！
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