Tag: Domestication

Carrots were not always orange, and a new paper by Coe, Bostan, Rolling et al. sheds new light into the history of carrot domestication and improvement, i.e., how we went from white, knotty carrots to the orange, smooth ones that are now consumed all over the world. The authors published a new version…

Cao et al. investigate the role of epigenetic variation in rice domestication and de-domestication. The Plant Cell (2023). https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad160 By Shuai Cao1,2 and Qingxin Song1 1 State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University,…

We’ve all seen striking photographs comparing the modern maize (Zea mays spp. mays L.) ear to the seed head of its wild-grass ancestor teosinte (Zea mays spp. parviglumis). Besides the huge increase in size, one of the features that allows us to munch on “corn on the cob” is the absence of the…

I’m excited by the ways that knowledge about plant developmental and metabolic programs is being used to make new varieties of plants. This excellent review describes some of these applications such as changes in fruit size or seed number. De novo domestication is a specific type of application that…

Increasing nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) and seed protein content are important for maize breeding. Modern maize hybrids have 6.5-16.5% seed protein content, while the wild ancestor of maize, called teosinte, has ~30% seed protein content. In addition, teosinte (accession Ames 21814) contains notably…