Geneticists trace humble apple's exotic lineage all the way to the Silk Road

The fruit's evolutionary history has been unpicked for the first time by studying a range of wild and cultivated apples from China to North America

It is a lunchbox staple so ubiquitous as to have become mundane. But the apple we know today is the fruit of an extraordinary journey, researchers have revealed.

Scientists studying the genetics of the humble apple have unpicked how the cultivated species emerged as traders travelled back and forth along the Silk Road - ancient routes running from the far east to the Mediterranean sea.