Is this the world's first PhD in apples?

A woman from Cambridge is doing a PhD in apples.

Joanna Crosby is studying the social history of the apple from the Victorian period to the present. She believes this is the first ever PhD about the fruit.

The apple was an appealing topic for Joanna because of its impact on social history - from the Tree of Knowledge to the falling apple said to have inspired Isaac Newton.

Joanna, who is a student at the University of Essex in Colchester, founded the Trumpington Community Orchard, where she is trying to grow varieties of apple that first appeared in the East of England.