{"id":237192,"date":"2026-05-14T22:27:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T03:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/a-fresh-approach-to-peppermint-250-new-variants-could-boost-flavor-and-fight-disease"},"modified":"2026-05-14T22:27:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T03:27:49","slug":"a-fresh-approach-to-peppermint-250-new-variants-could-boost-flavor-and-fight-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/a-fresh-approach-to-peppermint-250-new-variants-could-boost-flavor-and-fight-disease","title":{"rendered":"A fresh approach to peppermint: 250 new variants could boost flavor and fight disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-fresh-approach-to-peppermint-250-new-variants-could-boost-flavor-and-fight-disease.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The genomics of peppermint are not as fresh as their flavor but scientists from the University of California, Davis, have found a way to breathe new genetic variation into the species. The findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2532794123\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i>, could help the mint industry develop new varieties of peppermint and provide a roadmap for improving clonal crops more generally.<\/p>\n<p>Similar to strawberries, potatoes and many fruit trees, peppermint plants (<i>Mentha \u00d7 piperita<\/i>) are reproduced asexually by a process called clonal propagation. In the case of peppermint, this means that their genomes have remained unaltered for more than 200 years. This lack of genetic variation leaves them susceptible to disease and means that properties such as yield and flavor have remained stagnant.<\/p>\n<p>UC Davis plant biologists used radiation to induce mutations in the leading peppermint clone grown in the United States, resulting in more than 250 new and genetically distinct variants. Altogether, they introduced 1,406 large genetic mutations, which can now be used to identify key genes for breeding or selecting new and superior peppermint varieties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The genomics of peppermint are not as fresh as their flavor but scientists from the University of California, Davis, have found a way to breathe new genetic variation into the species. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help the mint industry develop new varieties of peppermint and provide [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}