Genome skimming reveals the origin of the Jerusalem Artichoke tuber crop species: neither from Jerusalem nor an Artichoke

The perennial sunflower Helianthus tuberosus, known as Jerusalem Artichoke or Sunchoke, was cultivated in eastern North America before European contact. As such, it represents one of the few taxa that can support an independent origin of domestication in this region. Its tubers were adopted as a source of food and forage when the species was transferred to the Old World in the early 1600s, and are still used today. Despite the cultural and economic importance of this tuber crop species, its origin is debated. Competing hypotheses implicate the occurrence of polyploidization with or without hybridization, and list the annual sunflower H. annuus and five distantly related perennial sunflower species as potential parents. Here, we test these scenarios by skimming the genomes of diverse populations of Jerusalem Artichoke and its putative progenitors. We identify relationships among Helianthus taxa using complete plastomes (151 551 bp), partial mitochondrial genomes (196 853 bp) and 35S (819...

多年生向日葵属植物菊芋（Helianthus tuberosus，又名Jerusalem Artichoke、Sunchoke），早在欧洲殖民者抵达北美东部地区前便已被种植。正因如此，它是少数可佐证该区域存在独立驯化起源的类群之一。17世纪早期该物种被引入旧大陆后，其块茎便被用作食物与饲料来源，且沿用至今。尽管这一块茎作物兼具文化与经济价值，但其起源问题仍存在争议。现有多种对立假说，均提出其起源涉及多倍化事件，且该事件可伴随或不伴随杂交过程，并将一年生向日葵（Helianthus annuus）以及5个亲缘关系较远的多年生向日葵物种列为潜在亲本。本研究通过对菊芋及其推测祖先类群的多样种群开展基因组浅层测序，对上述假说进行验证。研究借助完整质体基因组（151551 bp）、部分线粒体基因组（196853 bp）以及35S（819...）序列，明确向日葵属类群间的演化关系。