New Delhi (NVI): Israeli researchers have claimed that they successfully grew extinct date plants from ancient seeds found at archaeological sites in the Judean Desert.

A handful of date seeds from fruit that ripened around the time of Jesus have been successfully planted and grown in southern Israel.

The seeds, dubbed Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith and Hannah, were among many others discovered at the archaeological sites.

The results of the research have been published in the journal ‘Science Advances’.

It is not the first time the team have managed to grow ancient seeds: in 2008 they reported that they had germinated a 1,900-year-old Judean date palm seed from Masada – an ancient site extended by Herod the Great in the first century BC that looks out over the Dead Sea. That plant, a male, was named Methuselah after the oldest character in the Bible.

Today, Methuselah is an adult tree. But because it is male, it will never bear fruit.

And with the newly germinated seeds including females, the discovery could bear further fruit: the team say they hope to apply Methuselah’s pollen to Hannah – which is expected to produce a flower within the next two years – with the goal of producing dates.

Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies said the dates owe their survival to the special conditions around the Dead Sea. The fact that they were found at sites 300 meters below sea level may have protected them from radiation.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, Sara Sallon of Hadassah Medical Organization and colleagues report how they planted 32 Judean date palm seeds retrieved from a variety of archaeological sites across the Judean desert. These include Masada and caves at Qumran – shelters best known for concealing the Dead Sea scrolls but which were also used by refugees in ancient times.

After the seeds germinated, fragments of the seed shells were sent to Switzerland to be dated. The tests showed that they date to somewhere between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. This overlaps with the peak period of human activity at Masada and Qumran, which was between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E.

The seedlings’ genetic composition indicates that they are a hybrid of the two species of dates known today – the eastern one, whose habitat stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to India, and the western one, which was found in North Africa. The researchers speculated that these two species first interbred in the Land of Israel.

But they noted that the older seeds have more eastern DNA. Thus they concluded that the eastern strain was the native species, but that farmers in the Judean Desert may have interbred the two species 2,000 years ago to produce better dates.