Salar Shaaf | Search PubMed

PubMed2025

Native edaphoclimatic regions shape soil communities of crop wild progenitors.

Unveiling the soil biological communities ecologically associated with crop wild progenitors (CWPs) in their habitats of origin is essential for advancing productive and sustainable agriculture. A field survey was conducted to investigate the edaphoclimatic conditions and soil bacterial, fungal, protist, and invertebrate communities of 125 populations of direct progenitors of major crops for world agriculture. The wild populations clustered into four ecoregions shaped by two edaphoclimatic dimensions: one summarizing variations in soil sand contents and nutrients concentrations, and the other featuring changes in aridity, soil pH, and carbon storage potential. We identified a common soil core community across CWPs that varied significantly along deserts to tropical seasonal forests and savannas. The assembly of the soil core community was driven by varying environmental preferences amongst soil biodiversity kingdoms, reflecting potential shifts in their functional profiles. The tropical ecoregion exhibited higher proportion of acidophilic bacteria, fungal, and protist parasites, whilst desert ecosystems harboured greater abundances of saprophytic fungi and heterotrophic protists. Moreover, CWPs displayed unique microhabitats that incorporate variability into the soil community assembly. Our work reveals the biogeography of soil communities associated with CWPs, the first step towards the development of microbial rewilding initiatives.

centres of origin↗

PubMed2025

On the origin of the late-flowering ppd-H1 allele in barley.

To breed for climate resilient crops, an understanding of the genetic and environmental factors influencing adaptation is critical. Barley provides a model species to study adaptation to climate change. Here we present a detailed analysis of genetic variation at a major photoperiod response locus and relate this to the domestication history and dispersal of barley. The PPD-H1 locus (a PSEUDO-RESPONSE REGULATOR 7) promotes flowering under long-day conditions, and a natural mutation at this locus resulted in a recessive, late-flowering ppd-H1 allele. This mutation proved beneficial in high-latitude environments such as Northern Europe, where it allows extended vegetative growth during long spring days. We infer the origin of the mutated late-flowering ppd-H1 allele by re-sequencing a large geo-referenced collection of 942 Hordeum spontaneum, 5 Hordeum agriocrithon and 1110 domesticated (Hordeum vulgare) barleys. We demonstrate that the late-flowering phenotype originated from Desert-type wild barley in the Southern Levant and present evidence suggesting a post-domestication origin of the mutated ppd-H1 allele.

Hordeum↗