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Do you know where your carrots come from? Science can help if not

is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

By Marc Abrahams

1 February 2023

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Josie Ford

On the origin of carrots

Do you know where your carrot, if you have a carrot, comes from? A new study from the University of L’Aquila in Italy outlines one approach to finding out.

“It must be noted…” the paper explains, “that the methods proposed so far for tracing the geographical origin of carrots as well as for discriminating between organic and conventionally grown carrots, are somewhat scarce.” In this report, partially titled , Samantha Reale and her colleagues explain exactly why and how they addressed that scarcity.

In a way, they…

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