An international team of researchers has identified food-related DNA on the Shroud of Turin, the ancient linen cloth many Christians believe wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion, and the results raise as many questions about contamination as they do about the relic's age and origins.

The preprint study, published in March on bioRxiv, analyzed microscopic DNA fragments found in dust and fibers collected from the Shroud during sampling conducted in 1978. What scientists found was not visible food residue but genetic traces, and the list reads less like a first-century burial cloth and more like a Mediterranean grocery run spanning several centuries.

Carrot DNA alone accounted for roughly 30.9% of the identified plant sequences. Bread wheat made up another 11.6%. But the study also turned up DNA from crops that could not have existed in Europe or the Holy Land before Columbus sailed, tomatoes, maize and peanuts among them. That detail, as Fox News Digital reported, points to likely contamination after 1492.

A long list of biological hitchhikers

The range of plant DNA identified on the Shroud is striking. Beyond carrot and bread wheat, the study cataloged durum wheat, einkorn wheat, rye and maize. Horticultural crops included peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, melons and cucumbers. Researchers also found fruit tree DNA, banana, almond, walnut and sweet orange, along with fainter signals from fig, pistachio, apple, pear, hazelnut and grapevine.

As the study's authors put it:

"Other cereals found encompassed durum wheat (Triticum durum), einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum), maize (Zea mays) and rye (Secale cereale)."

Peanuts showed up with particular strength. The researchers also noted weak traces of perennial ryegrass, bluegrass, fescue, oats and clovers. Taken together, the biological footprint suggests the Shroud has been in close contact with a wide range of agricultural products over a very long period, exactly what you would expect of a cloth that has been handled, displayed, stored and venerated across centuries of European history.

The Shroud has been kept in Turin, Italy, since 1578. Its documented history stretches back to the mid-14th century. Anyone who has followed the debate over this relic knows that its journey through time has been anything but sterile.

Interest in physical evidence connected to the life of Jesus extends well beyond the Shroud. A recent book on archaeological evidence for Jesus has climbed bestseller charts, reflecting a growing appetite among believers and skeptics alike for tangible proof.

What DNA can, and cannot, tell us

The researchers were candid about the limits of their work. They stated plainly that the Shroud's age "cannot be determined through metagenomics because this methodology is unable to provide any robust evidence supporting either a medieval origin or a history dating back two millennia."

That admission matters. It means the DNA findings neither confirm nor refute the cloth's authenticity. The carrot DNA, for instance, was more similar to cultivated carrot varieties, but that alone says nothing about when or how it got there. The presence of New World crops narrows the contamination window to sometime after European contact with the Americas, but it cannot pinpoint whether the underlying cloth is ancient or medieval.

Still, the study's authors framed their contribution in positive terms:

"Nevertheless, our findings constitute a novel and significant contribution to the field, thoroughly elucidating the biological traces left by centuries of social, cultural and ecological engagement."

They added that their findings "illuminate important aspects of the Shroud's preservation history." In plain English: the cloth has picked up DNA from the world around it for a very long time, and that biological record tells us something about where the Shroud has been, even if it cannot settle the question of when it was made.

That question has dogged researchers for decades. The most famous attempt to answer it came in 1988, when radiocarbon dating placed the cloth between 1260 and 1390 A.D., a result that many believers have challenged on methodological grounds ever since.

The debate over evidence for Christ's burial and resurrection continues to draw serious investigators. A former cold-case detective and a longtime atheist have both described how examining the evidence changed their minds about the Resurrection.

Competing science, competing conclusions

The 1988 radiocarbon dating has not gone unchallenged by the scientific community itself. In 2024, Italy's Institute of Crystallography said its analysis using wide-angle X-ray scattering, a technique that measures structural degradation in cellulose fibers, produced results consistent with the Shroud being a roughly 2,000-year-old relic. That finding directly contradicts the medieval dating and suggests the linen could plausibly date to the time of Christ.

Neither result has been universally accepted. The Shroud remains one of the most studied and most contested artifacts in the world, a single piece of cloth caught between faith and forensics, with each new study adding data without delivering a final verdict.

Separately, a study by Dr. Kelly Kearse examined blood transfer patterns on the Shroud and reported visible serum halos around some blood clots. As Newsmax reported, Kearse argued that serum halos form only when blood has already begun clotting before contacting fabric, a detail consistent with the biblical account that Jesus was wrapped in cloth with spices without first being washed.

Kearse wrote that "the presence of such markings led to the interpretation that clotted blood was transferred to the cloth, and thus, could not have been fabricated by the direct addition of whole blood." He also noted the improbability that a medieval forger would have anticipated the eventual discovery of such halos through ultraviolet detection, a method that did not exist for centuries after any plausible forgery date.

That line of reasoning will not satisfy committed skeptics, and it is not meant to. But it adds another layer to a body of evidence that, piece by piece, makes a simple forgery explanation harder to sustain.

What the food DNA really means

For believers, the food DNA findings are a footnote, evidence of centuries of handling, not a challenge to the Shroud's authenticity. For skeptics, the contamination record may reinforce doubts about whether any test on the cloth can produce clean results. Both sides have a point.

The discovery of archaeological evidence connected to biblical history continues to generate public fascination. Egyptian archaeologists recently uncovered a fifth-century Christian monastic site with rare Coptic wall paintings, a reminder that the physical footprint of early Christianity keeps surfacing in unexpected places.

What the preprint study does establish is that the Shroud has been exposed to an extraordinary range of biological material over time. Carrot, wheat, peanuts, tomatoes, bananas, almonds, the DNA catalog is a record of human contact, agricultural environments and centuries of movement across Europe and possibly beyond. The researchers did not find a smoking gun. They found a biological diary.

The open questions are obvious. Who were the researchers, and what institution led the analysis? What controls did they use? How did they account for the 1978 sampling conditions, which predated modern contamination protocols? The preprint has not yet undergone peer review, and until it does, its conclusions carry the weight of preliminary findings, no more, no less.

Meanwhile, the search for physical traces of the biblical past goes on. An archaeologist has targeted Jerusalem's City of David in a renewed search for the Ark of the Covenant, another relic that sits at the intersection of faith and physical evidence.

Science has spent decades trying to settle the Shroud of Turin question with a single definitive test. Every new study adds information, and adds reasons to keep asking. The food DNA is the latest chapter, not the last word.

If the Shroud is a forgery, it is the most elaborately contaminated fake in human history. If it is genuine, it has survived not only two millennia but also the carrot DNA. Either way, the cloth keeps demanding answers that no single laboratory can provide.