How A Navajo Plant Researcher Is Reviving A Desert Peach

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman, live with KUER from the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah.

[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

We are now approaching one of my favorite micro seasons, peach season. Now, when you think of states known for their peaches, I’m going to guess that Utah probably is not at the top of your list. But in fact, there is a variety of peach, the Southwest peach, that grows in Utah’s arid landscape.

Native communities cultivated this peach tree here since the 1600s, but many of the orchards have been lost over time, and the remaining trees are now scattered across the state. But a local scientist and a member of the Navajo Nation is on a mission to track down Southwest peach trees so we can learn more about how you grow a peach in the desert, how it does it.

Reagan Wytsalucy is a plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University extension in San Juan County, Utah. She researches traditional Native American crops, including the Southwest peach, and she’s based in Blanding, Utah. Reagan, welcome to Science Friday.

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: Thank you. Thank you.

[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK. What is this peach’s back story/ Is it native to Utah? How did it get here?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: So that is the question. It is thought that the peaches have been traded before Spanish settlers coming across from Mexico into the southwest. That trading was done in advance of their settlement. So the earliest recording that I’ve found– and if somebody else, has found something earlier, please let me know– but was in 1630 by friar de Alonso Benavides as he was making his way from Mexico up the Rio Grande to get to Santa Fe, making the first account of thousands of fruit trees planted along the Rio Grande, being grown by the Native Americans that lived along the Rio Grande.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thousands, thousands. Wow, so huge orchards.

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: Vast, very vast orchards. Yes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so for the people listening at home who are not with us tonight in this theater, what does the peach look like?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: So it’s a small, like the size of an apricot. They can be white fleshed, yellow fleshed. They have a light blush color. Sometimes on the inside, I’ve actually found a peach that had a little bit of red flesh. There’s a photo of that going around on the internet. You can look it up. That’s the exact one. When I bit into it, I was like, I have to take a picture of this. And so yeah, they’re freestone, but yeah, very small like an apricot.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I have to know what they taste like.

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: There is an assortment of flavors. So there’s your typical peach flavor. There’s what I like to relate to something similar like a muskmelon. A lot of the white flesh peaches taste more like muskmelon. There is some that taste kind of like canned peaches. Some of them, the peel is slightly astringent, so you get this bitter sweet mix of a flavor that can come across. And then my favorite one that I’ve tried so far actually has a cinnamon spice flavor to it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do we know why they taste different? Is it based on where they’re growing or what the habitat is?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: It’s definitely just a genetic variability among them.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. So it feels like the $64 million question is, how do these peaches grow here? Do we know?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: So Native Americans have been very successful. If anyone is aware of how Native Americans have saved seed and adapted their crops to be able to thrive in the desert climate, it’s just a matter of what we would do. What appears to be good, what appears to be growing good– a way of assisted selection throughout saving seed and then replanting those seeds as necessary to replicate the crops so that way we have a food source.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And is there something in their genes that allows them to deal with this sort of landscape that they’re in?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: We are still looking at the genetics, so we don’t have that completely narrowed out. We’ve done a brief study just looking at, well, what is the population variability between each of the communities that we’ve been able to identify? because there’s very few of them left in our communities, and so they’re very difficult to track down.

So that was the first thing that we started to do was, is there any connection of these peaches to modern peach cultivars that are commonly found in nurseries, the fruit commercial production industry for peaches? And so far, they’re so inbred, they’ve been so isolated in their communities, that they are just not having any relationship to anything other than their own community itself. They’re so inbred that they’re even regionally inbred within themselves.

So peaches found in Hopi are regionally inbred and localized to Hopi conditions. Same thing with peaches found in Navajo Mountain area or peaches found in Canyon de Chelly. We are still exploring and collecting samples to continue the genetic work with them to be able to identify some of the variability.

So yeah, that’s part of it. We’ve done studies where we’ve looked at just drought tolerance. So we’ve controlled them in containerized systems in the greenhouse and looked at how well they recover after being put underneath drought circumstances where they’re basically wilting in a greenhouse, so very hot.

And we’ve rehydrated them. We completed these cycles over and over. And they just recovered a lot better. They put on more leaf growth. They just perform so much better than any of the other cultivars that we were testing them against.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Where did you first learn about the peach?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: I was a little girl growing up, and I first had heard the story from my dad probably when I was about eight. Had no idea. I didn’t really think much of it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What was the story?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: They were just talking about how there were peaches, and there’s corn. And they’re talking about all these different crops. So it’s the first time it was mentioned to me. And my father would reiterate that every so often. And it wasn’t until I was going to college. My first year of college, I was actually wanting to be a wedding planner. And I–

[LAUGHTER]

I know, go figure.

And so I was like, this isn’t for me. I was actually trying to get a business degree. And I was like, I don’t need a business degree to become a wedding planner. And so I was like, but I need a degree because it’s something my mother always reiterated to my sisters and I is get a degree. Make sure you can sustain yourself.

You don’t know what’s going to happen. If you marry somebody, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I live by that. So I was thinking, what is it that I could do?

And I went to my father, like, yo u know me best. I don’t know what to do. And I don’t like to be a person that does not have a plan in place or know the direction that I’m going. I don’t like to be idle. And so I asked him, and he says, go up to Utah State University, get a degree in agriculture.

Your sister’s up there. You’ll be close to family. And see if you can bring back the peaches. See if you can help our people bring back their agriculture. So there I went.

[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

And It’s amazing. That was it. I took his advice.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So that’s over 10 years ago. Why is this peach so important to you?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: As I started this pathway, one thing that was very lacking in my upbringing was that I had a disconnect in my heritage, who I am as Native American, being Diné. And I had always thought I want to live a life where I can be able to represent who I am.

And so I married somebody from the Zuni Pueblo, and he started to teach me a lot of these things in our home. And that started to open up my mind and my heart to be able to start thinking about how do I need to be receptive to working with my people, who are, more often than not, commonly misunderstood in many ways? And I was one of them that was at a mindset where I was misunderstanding my own people.

I guess I would explain it as maybe potentially undermining their abilities or their credibility to how traditional methods are done because it’s not proven to be a scientific method or a viable way of a lifestyle. And not understanding exactly what that lifestyle is also creates another misconception of what is it that I need to understand? Or how do I need to understand in order to be able to either uptake your lifestyle or to be able to respect what it is that you do?

And so I went down a pathway of rediscovery of myself in this. And so a lot of my passion comes, first and foremost of me, starting to figure out what my identity is through this research project.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So I understand that you’re looking for these trees.

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: Yes, I am looking for these trees. I’m still looking– we have found quite a bit within the Navajo, and there are a handful of samples that I’ve collected from the Hopi tribe. I’ve identified the remaining orchards within the Zuni Pueblo, but they are not bearing fruit. Or if there is a tree– there’s two trees that do bear fruit, but the squirrels oftentimes get them before anybody can get them.

[LAUGHTER]

FLORA LICHTMAN: When you find a tree, what happens?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: When I find a tree, I first and foremost, I work with the people that know about these orchards or where these trees exist. Who is the caretaker? I identify that. That’s respect to them, respect to their families, respect to their ancestors who had planted these trees.

And from that step on we go and we investigate. We look at how well they are being taken care of. Are they thriving enough to be able to bear fruit? What kind of scientific samples can we collect from this that can be useful for the data, whether it’s for genetic purposes, whether it’s for looking at fruit analysis, whether it’s for seed preservation to germinate a new tree from the seed, because these are all seed-propagated trees historically? And seeing if we can preserve the germplasm from these trees and then be able to isolate that, to be able to have more trees generate and healthy production systems that are tribally practiced or have tribal practices– managing them is what I want to say– and then making sure that they’re genetically pure so we can start giving seeds back to the community.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So would it be helpful if some friendly Utah residents were on the lookout for these trees?

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: Yes. Yes, it would be I need help. There’s a lot of people that have started reaching out to me and said, hey, I know. I think there was a tree that was given to me by some Navajo people or some Hopi people. Could these be part of it? Could you utilize the genetic resource from these trees? Could you utilize some seeds?

So anything is helpful at this point in time because we’re trying to piece together a pathway of history. We’ve been able to use corn to try and understand trading between Native American tribes in the early American history. We could also potentially use peaches to do that and see what trading looked like across the North American continent, potentially.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you so much, Reagan. Give it up for Reagan.

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Reagan Wytsalucy is a plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University extension in San Juan County, Utah.

REAGAN WYTSALUCY: Thank you so much.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, before we wrap up, if you want to learn more about the Southwest peach, we’ve got some resources for you on our website, sciencefriday.com/peach. You’ll find a story from KUER reporter David Condos and a guide to spotting the Southwest peach. That’s at sciencefriday.com/peach.

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