Apricots originated in Central Asia, where wild populations still grow today in the mountains of modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and western China. For centuries, scholars assumed the fruit came from either China or Armenia, but genomic research published in Nature Communications in 2021 clarified the picture: apricots were domesticated at least twice, independently, from two distinct wild populations in Central Asia roughly 2,250 to 2,900 years ago.
The Wild Ancestor in Central Asia
The wild apricot’s genetic homeland is the Ili River Valley, a lush corridor that straddles the border of Kazakhstan and China’s Xinjiang region. Genetic analysis of wild apricot populations across Asia found that trees in the Ili Valley carry the most ancestral gene variants and the highest genetic diversity of any population studied. This diversity is a hallmark of a species’ point of origin: the longer a plant has been growing in one place, the more genetic variation accumulates there.
These wild populations are relics of the ice ages. During glacial periods, the Ili Valley and the nearby Northern Junggar Basin served as refugia, sheltered pockets where apricot trees survived while ice and cold eliminated them elsewhere. When the climate warmed, these surviving trees became the seed stock for everything that followed.
Two Domestications, Not One
The old story was simple: apricots started in one place and spread outward. Genomic evidence tells a more complex story. Chinese cultivated apricots split from a southern Central Asian wild population about 2,900 years ago, while European cultivated apricots split from a northern Central Asian wild population roughly 2,250 years ago. These were independent domestication events, meaning two different human communities, separated by hundreds of miles of mountain terrain, each began selecting and cultivating apricots from their own local wild trees.
Archaeological finds support this timeline. The oldest recovered apricot remains come from China: kernels found in Zhumadian city in Henan province date to the Xia period, between 2070 and 1600 BC. Additional apricot remains turned up in Jingmen city in Hubei province, in a tomb from the Warring States period (475 to 221 BC). In Central Asia, by contrast, excavations in southern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have not found evidence of fruit and nut cultivation before about 1500 BC.
Why the Name Says “Armenia”
The apricot’s scientific name, Prunus armeniaca, literally means “Armenian plum.” This name stuck because by the time the fruit reached the Mediterranean world, Greeks and Romans associated it with Armenia, a major waypoint on trade routes from the east. The Roman naturalist Pliny, the Greek physician Dioscorides, and the agricultural writer Columella all described the fruit using some variation of “Armenian apple” or “Armenian plum.” When the Swedish botanist Linnaeus formalized plant naming in 1753, he adopted the Armenian label that had been in use for centuries.
The English word “apricot” took a far more winding path. It likely traces back to the Latin praecocia, meaning “early ripening,” a nod to the fruit’s short season. That Latin word passed through Byzantine Greek, then Arabic (al-barqūq, itself borrowed from Aramaic), then Spanish (albaricoque, dating from the Moorish period), then Catalan, then Middle French (abricot), and finally into English as “abrecock” before settling into its modern spelling. The Persian word for apricot, zardālūg, has an entirely separate and more poetic origin: it combines the word for “plum” with the adjective for “yellow.”
Spread Along the Silk Road
From Central Asia, apricots moved in two directions. Eastward, they entered northern China and eventually spread across East Asia. Westward, they traveled along Silk Road corridors through Persia, the Caucasus, and into the Mediterranean. The fruit was well established in Greece and Rome by the first century CE, based on references in multiple classical texts.
Researchers group the world’s apricot varieties into three broad lineages reflecting this migration. The oldest and most diverse group spans Central Asia, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India, centered on regions like the Fergana Valley, Samarkand, and the Zeravshan mountain range. A second group covers Iran, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan), and extends into Turkey, Syria, and North Africa. The third and youngest group is the European one, considered the least genetically diverse. These European apricots arrived from Armenia, Iran, and Arab countries over the last 2,000 years.
Where Apricots Grow Today
Global apricot production reached about 3.86 million metric tonnes in 2022. Turkey dominates, producing roughly 803,000 tonnes, more than any other country. Uzbekistan ranks second at about 451,000 tonnes, a reflection of Central Asia’s deep roots with the fruit. Iran, Italy, and Algeria round out the top five. The concentration of production in Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Iran maps closely onto the ancient corridors where the fruit first spread from its wild homeland thousands of years ago.