Israeli scientists revive extinct native date palm

Jun 12, 2008

Tel Aviv - Israeli scientists have succeeded in getting a 2,000-year-old date seed to sprout and grow into a palm of a native type that had been extinct for hundreds of years.

That, they say, makes it the oldest known seed ever germinated.

The seed - nicknamed Methusaleh after the oldest person in the Bible - was found in the ancient fortress of Masada, on a hilltop in the Judean desert by the Dead Sea where Jewish zealots committed mass suicide to avoid surrender to the Romans in the first century CE.

Project manager Sarah Sallon hopes the palm will prove to be a fruit-bearing female, but that she will know only in a few years time, when the now more than 1.20-metre-tall sprout grows into a palm tree.
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