Origins and insights into the historic Judean date palm based on genetic analysis of germinated ancient seeds and morphometric studies.

The article focuses on study of germination of 2000-year-old seeds of Phoenix dactylifera (date palm) from Judean desert archaeological sites. Topics discussed include microsatellite genotyping of germinated seeds of date palm, exchanges of genetic material occurred between the Middle East (eastern) and North Africa (western) date palm gene pools; and nuclear genome on a gradient from east to west of genetic contributions.