Crop wild relatives hold a vast reservoir of untapped genetic variation for traits that matter to agriculture, including resistance to pests and diseases and tolerance to the abiotic stresses that come with climate change.
During my postdoc at UC Davis, I studied structural variation in maize and its wild relative, teosinte. Working with crops alongside their wild relatives offers a window onto the interplay between plant breeding, climate change, genome function, natural selection and long-term evolutionary dynamics.