The Centre theme “Genetic basis of domestication and adaptation” seeks to understand what makes a plant ‘successful’ in both nature and agriculture. By integrating large-scale genomics and phenotypic data, we will explore the genetic underpinnings of plant success across a vast range of environmental conditions. This will enable us to link the phenotype, genotype, and fitness in multiple study systems – one of the holy grails of evolutionary biology.

We will disentangle how the genetic architecture of traits (including alleles, genes, gene expression patterns, methylation, gene pathways, gene networks, structural arrangements, and 3D genome structure) contributes to plant success. We will harness the emerging field of pangenomics to reveal how core and accessory genes shape domestication and adaptation. Additionally, we will investigate how hormonal networks and co-regulated gene expression modules evolve when plants encounter extreme environmental pressures, such as drought and heat.

By combining insights from genomics with advanced machine learning techniques, we aim to identify signatures of domestication and adaptation across diverse plant genomes. These methods will also help uncover complex genetic interactions that drive trait evolution. Understanding these processes will enable us to investigate how multivariate phenotypes evolve over time and determine whether evolutionary trade-offs emerge when multiple traits are under selection. Our theme focusses on a broad range of traits related to drought and heat tolerance, yield, flowering, branching, phenology, nutrient acquisition through symbioses, and other biotic and abiotic stressors.

Finally, this theme will harness systems of replicated evolution to investigate how repeatable evolution is and whether populations consistently follow the same evolutionary pathways during adaptation. This work will help us to create models to predict adaptive responses, helping us understand how plants will respond to an ever-changing climate.