ScienceDaily: North America isn't known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity, yet a new inventory has uncovered nearly 4,600 wild relatives of crop plants in the United States, including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower, bean, sweet potato, and strawberry.
The findings, which were published today (Apr. 29) in the journal Crop Science, are good news for plant breeders, who've relied increasingly in recent years on the wild kin of domesticated crops as new sources of disease...