From wild to crop: unravelling the impact of root domestication on drought tolerance

Crop domestication revolutionised human life. This process induced changes in plant traits that produced plants that grew faster and
generated higher yields. However, remarkably little is known about how plant roots have changed throughout the domestication
process. Climate change is causing increasing droughts in many parts of the world. Given that roots are the way that water enters the
plant, they are key for understanding drought tolerance. Root traits from crop ancestors could offer a route to increasing drought
tolerance of modern crops. To do this, we need to focus our efforts on the impact of domestication on roots and the rhizosphere (the
zone around the root including microbes), rather than only aboveground traits as traditionally done. WILD-ROOTS will therefore test
the overall hypothesis that crop domestication led to changes in root and rhizosphere traits which decreased the drought tolerance
of crops compared to their wild relatives