“Polygenic Adaptation”
Scientists have revealed how certain wild plants with naturally doubled ‘supergenomes’ can stay ahead of the game when it comes to adapting to climate volatility and hostile environments.
This world-first study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution,could have significant implications for plant and crop sustainability in the face of climate change.
What makes a pathogen successful? What determines a plant’s ability to defend itself against an invader? The outcome of a myriad of encounters between plants and their pathogens have preoccupied humans since the dawn of agriculture. Crop diseases have a devastating economic impact that reaches billions of dollars annually and are a recurring global threat to food production (Horvath 2018). Discovering the key that unlocks the code of plant-pathogen interactions has motivated extensive research on the molecular determinants of pathogen virulence and plant resistance, and on devising strategies to apply this knowledge in modern agricultural practices.
