Selective sorting of ancestral introgression in maize and teosinte along an elevational cline.

This paper yielded some tremendous findings with regards to not only how adaptive genes in native crop wild relatives can shape crops abilities to adapt to climates they otherwise would not be able to. The practical implications of the results here are pretty straightforward when you look at agricultural systems that are basically being asked to produce in completely different environments than those of 50 to 100 years ago. There are some really interesting tidbits in here when you start to look into the details of the results that to me suggest really interesting dynamics in how closely related species that are mostly isolated can manage to live almost on top of one another and still thrive. The part of this paper I’m specifically referring to here gets called out in the abstract with this succinct summary “In the other direction, we find patterns consistent with adaptive and clinal introgression of maize ancestry into sympatric mexicana at many loci across the genome, suggesting that maize also contributes to adaptation in mexicana, especially at the lower end of its elevational range.”

I don’t know how often we have considered that domesticated plants may also be helping out their wild relatives. Generally we think pretty firmly in the opposite directions that native relatives can help crops, especially in terms of environments that crops are not adapted to but wild relatives are. We may also think about crop-wild introgression as swamping local wild populations with maladaptive crop pollen as we, comparatively, grow so many crops in so many different places. But it’s quite compelling to me the idea that if locally adapted wild populations can contribute beneficial alleles to crops that, under the correct conditions, there is no real reason to believe that crops also can’t be providing beneficial alleles to their wild relatives.

Overall, just a wonderfully constructed and executed study, I really love research like this that generates valuable knowledge where little existed previously but also stimulates me to think differently about things I otherwise wouldn’t have.