Mamadou Dia Sow, Cristian Forestan, Caroline Pont, Peter Civáň, Raffaella Battaglia, Michael Seidel, Cléa Siguret, Pasquale Luca Curci, Alessandro Tondelli, Daniela Bustos Korts, Elisabetta Mazzucotelli, Thibault Leroy, Cécile Huneau, Manon Delahaye, Danara Ormanbekova, Matteo Bozzoli, Perle Guarino‐Vignon, Caroline Schaal, Manon Cabanis, Marie Lelievre, Jean Cayrol, Davide Guerra, Domenica Nigro, Ágata Gadaleta, Jennifer Ens, Krystalee Wiebe, Beth Shapiro, Richard E. Green, Fred A. van Eeuwijk, Micha Bayer, Joanne Russell, Ian Dawson, Robbie Waugh, Benjamin Kilian, Ludovic Orlando, Gabriella Sonnante, Curtis Pozniak, Roberto Tuberosa, Georg Haberer, Marco Maccaferri, Luigi Cattivelli, Jérôme Salse
Over the past 10,000 years, the development of civilization has been enabled by the domestication of plants and animals tailored to human needs. The Triticeae tribe, including barley and wheat, has emerged as one of the most important sources of staple foods worldwide. Here, comparing genomes of wheat and barley genotypes from around the world, we unveiled genomic footprints of convergent selection affecting genes involved in crop adaptation and productivity, as well as a lack of parallel selection for diverse genes delivering genetic diversity specific to particular geographic and associated environmental conditions. We demonstrate that studying convergent selection between crops can help to identify genes crucial for adaptation and sources of diversity for improving cultivated species—forming the basis of the proposed concept of inter-crop translational research for breeding. Convergent selection between crops can help to identify genetic variants with important roles in adaptation as a source of diversity for the improvement of cultivated species through the concept of inter-crop translational research for breeding.