Travis Parker & team created a genetic “family tree” for beans to help breeders find traits that will keep this staple crop producing despite the challenges growers face. They also confirmed beans’ earliest Mesoamerican domestication in Jalisco, Mexico.
Immobile organisms, plants have needed to evolve ingenious and highly specific defenses to threats, such as predators. These defenses come in the form of chemicals known as specialized metabolites and are responsible for the plant kingdom’s rich source of drugs, poisons, and dyes.
