Фисташка: Биология, Геномика и История Культивирования.

Genus of flowering plants in the sumac family Anacardiaceae
Automatic taxobox
|fossil range = Late Cretaceous
|image = Pistacia lentiscus (male flowers). jpg
|image caption = Pistacia lentiscus
|taxon = Pistacia
|authority = L.
|subdivision ranks = Species
|subdivision = See text
|synonyms = Terebinthus Mill. The genus is estimated to be about 80 million years old. It is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Anacardiaceae. The plants are dioecious, and have male and female trees independently; a viable population should have both sexes. Well known species in the genus Pistacia include P. vera, the pistachio, grown for its edible seeds; P. terebinthus, from which terebinth resin, a turpentine, is produced; P. lentiscus, source of the plant resin mastic; and P. chinensis, the Chinese pistache, cultivated as an ornamental tree.

Scientists from Iran and China assembled a draft genome of pistachio and resequenced 107 whole genomes, including 93 domestic and 14 wild individuals of P. vera and 35 other genomes from different wild Pistacia species. Integrating genomic and transcriptomic analyses revealed expanded gene families (e. g., cytochrome P450 and chitinase) and the jasmonic acid (JA) biosynthetic pathway that are likely involved in stress adaptation. Comparative population genomic analyses revealed that pistachio was domesticated about 8000 years ago, and that likely key genes for domestication are those involved in tree and seed size, which experienced artificial selection.

Best known as the pistachio, P. vera is a small tree native to Iran, grown for its edible seeds. The seeds of the other species were also eaten in prehistory, but are too small to have commercial value today. Records of Pistacia from preclassical archaeological sites, and mentions in preclassical texts, always refer to one of these other species (often P. terebinthus). P. terebinthus (the terebinth), also a native of Iran, and the western Mediterranean countries, is tapped for turpentine. It is also common in the eastern Mediterranean countries. Because terebinths have the ability to kill certain bacteria, terebinth resin was widely used as a preservative in ancient wine. In the Zagros Mountains of Iran, in one of the earliest examples of winemaking, archaeologists discovered terebinth resin deposits from 5400 to 5000 BC in jars that also contained grape juice residue. P. lentiscus, an evergreen shrub or small tree of the Mediterranean region, supplies a resin called mastic. P. chinensis (Chinese pistache), the most frost tolerant species in the genus, is grown as an ornamental tree, valued for its bright red autumn leaf colour.