Eli5: why are carrots orange? I know originally they were another colour, so why orange now
In: Biology
carrots come in many colors and the orange carrot we have today is a product of selective breeding which also produces a higher amount of beta carotene.
if you would like to read an in depth history of this humble veggie there is no better place then the world carrot museum :
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html
Probably due to selective breeding.
The β-Carotene (orange) pigment was naturally present in carrots (in small quantities) making them yellowish or off- white.
A mutation must have caused the pigment to be more abundant, which our human ancestors might have fancied seeing and made sure to grow the mutated crops over and over.
Like natural selection, this artificial selection favoured the excess of the orange pigment, and so it was.
The taste. Get yourself a wild carrot and try it. Genetics are interesting, and often when you change a certain aspect there are unintended consequences. For example, dogs were bred for specific purposes and their resulting colors were directly influenced by that.
I used to live near Sandwich in Kent, England. There was a local story that Dutch immigrants in Sandwich bred orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange.
It was the Dutch who first made orange carrots in the 16th century. Beta carotene is the pigment in modern carrots that make them orange. All carrots have some beta carotene, and the Dutch farmers selectively bred the yellow variety of carrots to increase the amount of beta carotene in them until they became orange. These orange carrots are now the predominant variety, although you can still buy yellow and purple ones.
The popular story is that the Dutch created orange carrots to honor their royal family, the House of Orange, but there’s little historical evidence to back this up. What’s more likely is that the new orange variety simply tasted better than the yellow or purple versions, and gained its popularity that way.
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