Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analyzing the genomes of plants from across the world.
Plants & Animals
Jul 17, 2021
9
5818
Corn split off from its closest relative teosinte, a wild Mexican grass, about 10,000 years ago thanks to the breeding efforts of early Mexican farmers. Today it's hard to tell that the two plants were ever close kin: Corn ...
Biotechnology
Sep 25, 2011
0
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- DNA study suggests that further waves of prehistoric immigration are waiting to be discovered. Central and northern Europe's first farmers were immigrants with barely any ancestral ties to the modern population, ...
Archaeology
Sep 3, 2009
4
3
The story of how ancient wolves came to claim a place near the campfire as humanity's best friend is a familiar tale (even if scientists are still working out some of the specifics). In order to be domesticated, a wild animal ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Apr 10, 2023
0
53
A Kansas State University-led study has found that reintroducing bison—a formerly dominant grazer—doubles plant diversity in a tallgrass prairie. The research involves more than 30 years of data collected at the Konza ...
Ecology
Aug 29, 2022
1
15869
Plants need water to grow. So if there's water, shouldn't there be more plants? New research out of UC Santa Barbara and Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia, Kenya shows it's a lot more complicated than that.
Plants & Animals
Oct 18, 2021
0
17
While domestication of plants has yielded bigger crops, the process has often had a negative effect on plant microbiomes, making domesticated plants more dependent on fertilizer and other soil amendments than their wild relatives.
Ecology
Mar 10, 2020
0
668
The plants consumed for food have changed drastically in the 10,000 years since humans began practicing agriculture, but hominids have been intensively interacting with the plants and animals around them since before the ...
Ecology
Feb 27, 2020
0
60
Many familiar grains today, like quinoa, amaranth, millets, hemp and buckwheat, have traits that indicate that they co-evolved for dispersion by large grazing mammals. During the Pleistocene, massive herds directed the ecology ...
Evolution
Jul 8, 2019
0
117
Researchers analyzing the genomes of cultivated cacao trees have traced their origin to a "single domestication event" some 3,600 years ago. The discovery opens a new front in a long-running argument regarding when and where ...
Biotechnology
Oct 24, 2018
1
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