Monday, April 16, 2018

Arrival of The Sweet Potato


     Genomes have allowed geneticists to track the origins of humans, plants, wildlife, etc. Studying the sweet potato genome has showed researchers that the crop had been growing in Polynesia a long time before Americans had colonized there. The study also revealed that sweet potatoes originated about 800,000 years before humans did.
     Researchers in Scotland are debating that the current revelations about the sweet potato have also created an alternate way to grow crops. The genetic diversity found within the screening allowed scientist to change imperfections in the plant's genetic make up and make them compatible with other crops.
     Currently, there are farmers who have been looking for a diverse way to grow sweet potatoes. Genomic screening that is being improved and developed can help overcome some obstacles that may be stopping them from growing sweet potatoes.

See the source image

 http://www.techtimes.com/articles/225086/20180413/genetics-study-indicates-sweet-potato-arrived-in-polynesia-long-before-american-colonization.htm


https://potatoes.ncsu.edu/Sweetpotato.html

2 comments:

  1. It is very eye opening just how much we can do with science. The fact that from a sweet potato we are able to obtain such information that give us insight to our history. It is also very crazy that this food originated 800,000 years before humans did. It is amazing that we can use genomes to track the history of things and find their story through science. By using this information they can hopefully find alternative solution for successfully growing sweet potatoes. I found this post and research very interesting, we can learn so much just from a starch.

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  2. It is neat to see how something as simple as a sweet potato can contain such a giant genome. It's also very interesting to learn that the sweet potato is 800,000 years older than humans are! Hopefully there will be more research done to these starches in order to figure out more genetic information.

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