Tel-Hai Magazine 2022

Pomegranates: an ancient fruit with an exciting future

Prof. Rachel Amir talks about her research into enhancing the nutritional value of pomegranates, her life-long passion for plants, and working at Tel-Hai

Professor Rachel Amir has been a lectur er and researcher at Tel-Hai since 1987 and is currently working on enhancing the nutritional value and the medicinal properties of pomegranates. In a recent interview, she talks of her research and of her life-long passion for plants. “Plants interested and excited me from a very young age. I already knew I wanted to work with plants when I was about 6 and, by the time I was 10, I was certain that I would later engage in plant-related research. It was my father who instilled this love in me,” Amir recounts. “After the War of Independence, my fa ther, a Holocaust survivor from Europe, found himself working as a farmer on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. Like many oth er pioneers, he had no previous knowl edge of agriculture. However, he was moved by even trivial phenomena, like sowing seeds and seeing them grow and, more remarkably, by producing crops that supported the community. Despite having no prior knowledge, he became involved in developing new methods of cultivation. He claimed that the lack of a traditional farming background was ac

tually an advantage for Israeli pioneers because it led to an open-minded ap proach towards improvement and inno vation. When I was a child, my father took me to see the fields and his enthusi

asm gripped me too.” A Biblical fruit

Professor Amir studied many aspects of plant biology before beginning her work on pomegranates. “Here, in the Upper Galilee, I saw an abundance of non-com mercial varieties of pomegranates grow ing on the edges of modern and ancient villages, and this attracted my attention. Pomegranate trees, Punica granatum L., were already growing in the land of Isra el in biblical times, and appear in the Book of Numbers, 13:23, as one of the species brought back by the spies sent by Moses to scout the promised land and, in Deuteronomy, 8:8, as one of the seven species that bless the land. However, pomegranates originated from Central Asia and spread from there to other cli matic regions. Over time, pomegranates have diversified, as farmers and growers

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