This is not a new story but it's new to me and I wanted to start a thread here about it. Soon after the modern state of Israel was re-established, a disease killed off most of the date palms in Morocco. A group of Jews took some seedlings back to Israel and started Israel's world-famous date palm agriculture. Israel grows about 80% of the world's Medjoul Dates, which are considered the best.
However, up until about 2000 years ago Israel was famous for another kind of date palm, the Judean Date Palm. Most of the trees were killed off by the Romans and the last known trees were killed by Crusaders.
However, in 1960 archaeologists found a pot filled with dried dates in the ruins of Masada. The dates were put into storage for many years. Then in 2005 Dr. Sarah Sallon got permission to try to germinate some of the seeds. She sent them to Elaine Soloway at Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel. Elaine was an emigrant from California with several degrees in agriculture and tree nutrition. She was a tree surgeon when she emigrated to Israel in 1971.
Elaine succeeded in getting one of the seeds to germinate and the tree was named Methuselah. Based on that success other seeds, including some found at Qumran, were hydrated and now, years later, 7 male and 2 female Judean Date Palms are thriving at the kibbutz. They've even produced new dates, sparking hope that the species can be brought back completely and put into production.
Here is a video from the BBC from late 2021/early 2022 about the project.
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And here is a story from the
Times of Israel:
After reviving ancient dates, a Negev pioneer plants seeds against a dry future