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Abstract:
People introduced maize to the Southwest US approximately 4,000 years ago, but full maize agriculture was not successful in the temperate uplands of the Colorado Plateau for another 2,000 years. Because early flowering characterizes modern temperate maize, we used a large inbred panel to predict days to flowering in an archaeological maize population from the dawn of temperate maize agriculture on the Colorado Plateau, inferring marginal adaptation. Cross-population predictions were validated on a population of descendant temperate and tropical Southwest US landraces with high predictive ability. Demographic modelling with modern outbred Zea and the archaeological population supported in situ adaptation to temperate environments based primarily on ancient standing variation. The impacts of this historical process continue to resonate in commercially important modern germplasm.
