Centuries-Old Viable Fruit of Sacred Lotus Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn var. China Antique

Abstract

During the Sino-Japanese conflict of the 1920s, Japanese botanist Ichiro Ohga was presented single-seeded fruit of Nelumbo nucifera var. China Antique collected by a local farmer from a dry lakebed in Northeast China (then, “Manchuria”). Ohga studied the fruit and published his findings. Years later, we tested the germination of Nelumbo fruit from the same locality. The oldest seed sprouted, having a germination time of ~3 days, was radiocarbon dated to be ~1300 years old. These cold- and drought-tolerant seeds exhibited shoot-before-root emergence and a primary green plumule capable of “dim-light” photosynthesis. Such traits and the notable long-term viability of the fruit spurred the interest of Ray Ming, University of Illinois that has now led to the sequencing of the Nelumbo genome. Analyses of this genome may provide insight into the biochemistry of Nelumbo on wax-biosynthesis genes, and application of aging-related thermostable proteins to the extension of seed-life and improvement of food quality of economic crops. Here, we review the history of these long-lived Nelumbo fruit, and their occurrence, discovery, collection, propagation, and methods of seedling care. The robust impermeable wax- and suberin-covered pericarp is a major factor contributing to their remarkable longevity. New findings are presented on the modern and 459- and 464-year-old pericarp anatomy, impermeability to water, and whole fruit and pericarp mechanical properties, and comparison of the mode of fruit weight-gain during imbibition and germination time relative to fruit maturity.