Adaptive introgression from maize has facilitated the establishment of teosinte as a noxious weed in Europe

2020

Global trade has considerably accelerated biological invasions. The annual tropical teosintes, the closest wild relatives of maize, were recently reported as new agricultural weeds in two European countries, Spain and France. Their prompt settlement under climatic conditions differing drastically from that of their native range indicates rapid genetic evolution. We performed a phenotypic comparison of French and Mexican teosintes under European conditions and showed that only the former could complete their life cycle during maize cropping season. To test the hypothesis that crop-to-wild introgression triggered such rapid adaptation, we used single nucleotide polymorphisms to characterize p…