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. 2012 Feb 28;109(9):3412-5.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1121411109. Epub 2012 Feb 14.

Evolution of wild cereals during 28 years of global warming in Israel

Eviatar Nevo  1 , Yong-Bi Fu, Tomas Pavlicek, Souad Khalifa, Mordechai Tavasi, Avigdor Beiles
Affiliations

Evolution of wild cereals during 28 years of global warming in Israel

Eviatar Nevo et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Climate change is a major environmental stress threatening biodiversity and human civilization. The best hope to secure staple food for humans and animal feed by future crop improvement depends on wild progenitors. We examined 10 wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides Koern.) populations and 10 wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum K. Koch) populations in Israel, sampling them in 1980 and again in 2008, and performed phenotypic and genotypic analyses on the collected samples. We witnessed the profound adaptive changes of these wild cereals in Israel over the last 28 y in flowering time and simple sequence repeat allelic turnover. The revealed evolutionary changes imply unrealized risks present in genetic resources for crop improvement and human food production.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Differences in FT (days) of wild emmer wheat and wild barley collected in 1980 and in 2008. (A) The FT differences in 10 wild emmer wheat populations. (B) The FT differences in 10 wild barley populations. The x axis shows populations numbered from north to south. The y axis shows days from germination to flowering.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Genetic associations of individual wild emmer wheat and wild barley plants, as revealed by the principle coordinates analysis of SSR markers. (A) The associations of 143 and 149 individual samples collected in 1980 and in 2008 of the 10 wild emmer wheat populations, respectively. (B) The associations of 148 and 148 individual samples collected in 1980 and in 2008 of the 10 wild barley populations, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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