We are used to having a range of beans, fruits and vegetables being available to us; however, we rely on a surprisingly narrow amount of diversity (both in terms of the range of crops, and the varieties of each). 90% of human calories come from just 15 crops and 50% from the ‘big three’ (wheat, rice and maize).
In this talk, Mark will discuss what we know about the domestication process (largely from investigating these ‘big-hitter’ crops) and the genes and alleles that underlie important phenotypes. He will then move on to reveal how our understanding of evolutionary processes more generally can lead to conclusions (or hypotheses) about why only a handful of crops can be considered domesticated out of the thousands of edible plants. Future directions of research will also be proposed, for example whether there are features of the species that were domesticated that ‘primed’ them for domestication, and why domestication occurred in a certain place at a certain time.
Finally, he will discuss our growing understanding of so-called ‘underutilised’ or ‘forgotten’ crops, and how these could provide knowledge, genes and crops for a future climate, where the current staples are likely to struggle. Mark will end by discussing what we might be eating in the future, and how we will identify and evolve these novel crops.
00:00 Introduction
06:33 A history of crop domestication
15:40 The genetics of domestication
22:02 Teosinte vs maize
24:54 Wild vs domicated tomatoes
26:39 Why do we eat the crops we eat?
39:07 Climate change, crop yields & nutrition
42:33 New novel crops for the future
Speaker profile: Mark is an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton and has been so for 8 years. Prior to this Mark completed his PhD in St Andrews, and postdocs in Athens, Georgia, USA and Oxford. In his lab they have two main themes: speciation, adaptation and hybridisation in the wild, and domestication and crop evolution. More and more he is having problems differentiating the two, given that all the questions being answered about wild plants are clearly of relevance to the domestication questions (as hopefully will become clear in the talk). The lab’s work typically involves genomic and transcriptomic investigations and a sizeable amount of bioinformatics; although they make sure they never forget about what these plants look like, where they live and how they are affected by humans and the environment.
Mark never really chose to work on plants, but he cannot imagine doing anything else now. The richness of the world is reliant on the plants around us (and the plants that we eat). Not only this, but each plant must grow and survive where their seed fell, they cannot walk, fly or otherwise select a better environment. This is perhaps one of the most amazing things about being a plant scientist.