Cactus genes connect modern Mexico to its prehistoric past

In prehistoric times farmers across the world domesticated wild plants to create an agricultural revolution. As a result the ancestral plants have been lost, causing problems for anyone studying the domestication process of modern-day varieties, but that might change. A team led by Fabiola Parra at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) has managed to trace a domesticated cactus, the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe (Stenocereus pruinosus) to its living ancestor that can still be found in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. The research is published in the September 2010 edition of the Annals of Botany...

Read the whole article on

More from