10,000 years of wheat and barley selection reveal shared climate-adaptation genes

Over the course of ten millennia, researchers from INRAE, the University of Clermont Auvergne, and the CNRS have identified key genes shared by wheat and barley that have helped these crops adapt to climate changes. By reconstructing 10 ancient genomes, the team of scientists have uncovered a list of around a hundred gene variants that played crucial roles in the adaptation of these crops over their domestication history.

These findings, published in Molecular Plant and Nature Plants, offer new avenues for plant breeders and researchers to improve crop varieties in the face of a changing climate. By comparing 84 modern genomes from cultivated plants worldwide, the researchers were able to reconstruct 10 ancestral paleogenomes that date back over 200 million years, providing valuable insights into the evolutionary history of these plants.

The study focused on wheat and barley, two of the earliest domesticated crops, as they have long supported agriculture and share many similarities in their environmental conditions. The team validated the role of three known genes in wheat and identified additional genes that contribute to traits such as yield and flowering date, as well as genes involved in epigenetic regulation.

These discoveries have been made possible through the development of two open-access tools, AGR and OrthoViewer, which allow researchers and breeders to compare genomes and access conserved genes across various plant species. The researchers plan to continue their work on paleogenomes, focusing on identifying genes with retained adaptive functions in crops like wheat, barley, rice, maize, and sorghum, ultimately helping to develop crop varieties that can withstand the challenges posed by climate change.