# Does the amount of nutrition, scale with the size of the fruit? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 25, 2020, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427 "2020-11-25T16:40:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427/21 "2020-11-26T22:12:09Z")
All apples in an entire orchard share the same DNA (except the DNA in the seeds) if they are the same apple variety, since apples trees are propagated by grafting - they are clones of the original seedling that produced the distinct apple variety. The DNA in the seeds is unique because it is a mix of both parents - even if both parents are the same variety, the process of reproduction juggles the genes. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427/22 "2020-11-26T23:40:10Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > The fruit themselves are just the fleshy ripe ovaries of the parent. Which opens up the concept of true and false fruits and for apples, being false fruits, this is technically not correct. (I was once told that pedantry was the life blood of GQ) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427/23 "2020-11-27T12:21:09Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Is this all correct? > > Depending on what is actually correct about this, it may feed into the question of whether adjacent apples share DNA with each other or their parent tree. Can someone clarify? Fascinating. I vaguely recall learning a bit about plant life cycles at that age, but all of it struck me as profoundly weird and I quickly dumped it. Including this alternation idea; thank you for showing me something new and really very interesting. The wiki on this seems very thorough and to a decent level of detail with lots more depth readily linked. There’s nothing controversial about: > **[Alternation of generations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations)** > > Alternation of generations (also known as metagenesis or heterogenesis) is the predominant type of life cycle in plants and algae. In plants both phases are multicellular: the haploid sexual phase – the gametophyte – alternates with a diploid asexual phase – the sporophyte. > A mature sporophyte produces haploid spores by meiosis, a process which reduces the number of chromosomes to half, from two sets to one. The resulting haploid spores germinate and grow into multicellular haploid gametophytes.... AIUI, in most higher land plants that alternation, if it occurs at all, is an organism-level thing, not a fruit-level thing. So even if, e.g., apple trees do meaningfully participate in alternation (which is unclear to me) any given tree would produce individual apples that are all the same in this factor. Obviously modern agricultural practices and carefully engineered plants are very far off Nature’s “design point” for plant reproduction. Whole fields of clones, each sitting on single or multi-grafted root stocks which are themselves identical clones of different cultivars and in some cases different species is not what Mother Nature intended. Which is not to say it’s _Eeeevil_, just to say it’s human-made (human-tweaked?) enough that it need not conform closely to how wild plants work. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427/24 "2020-11-27T14:40:33Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > AIUI, in most higher land plants that alternation, if it occurs at all, is an organism-level thing, not a fruit-level thing. So even if, e.g., apple trees do meaningfully participate in alternation (which is unclear to me) any given tree would produce individual apples that are all the same in this factor. It seems like if people are saying that alternation of generations exists in, for example, flowering plants, the haploid stage is the pollen/ovum. Pollen does behave sort-of-like a distinct organism - that is, when it lands on the stigma, it typically grows a root-like pollen tube structure down to the ovum in order to deliver its genetic material - in some plants (ginkgo, I think), the pollen produces motile sperm that perform the function. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-amount-of-nutrition-scale-with-the-size-of-the-fruit/926427.md?page=1)