Annona cherimola is a diploid species (2n=2x=14), which originated in Mesoamerica. It is denominated as Cherimoya or "chirimoya" in South America and "Anona" in Central America as other closely related species. In fact, this word was used by Linnaeus to name the genus Annona, but referred to it as the Latin Word "annona" which means "the harvest of a year". This perennial fruit crop has been cultivated and extremely appreciated since pre-Columbian times by the Maya, Olmec or/and Izapa civilizations.
The cherimoya tree has hermaphroditic flowers and protogynous dichogamy, where female and male structures mature at different times to prevent self-fertilization and encourage cross-pollination.
Spain is the principal cherimoya commercial producer country with about 3,000 ha followed by Peru and Chile. Although cherimoya is mainly cultivated in family orchards in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, this crop is also cultivated at small scale in California (USA), Argentina, Madeira (Portugal), Ecuador, Bolivia, South Africa, Australia, Italy, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Israel.
The Institute of Subtropical and Mediterranean Horticulture (IHSM) maintains the largest germplasm collection of varieties of A. cherimola, with more than 300 accessions.
Recently, the interest in this family has risen significantly due to the presence of important compounds with medicinal properties, some of them exclusive in the Annonaceae, as polyketide secondary metabolites acetogenins, present especially in seed and leaves, with antitumor, antimalarial and pesticidal properties.
The A. cherimola genome cv. Fino de Jete was published by Talavera et al. 2023.
| Scaffolds | Chromosomes | |
|---|---|---|
| Total assembly size (Gb) | 1.12 | 1.13 |
| Number of sequences | 15,076 | 2,052 |
| Longest sequence (Mb) | 3.439 | 212.25 |
| Average length (Mb) | 0.074 | 0.55 |
| N50 | 1.314 | 3 |
| N50 Length (Mb) | 0.171 | 170.85 |
