Exome Capture to study Genomic Diversity, Adaptation and Selection in Barley.

Barley was domesticated around 10,000 years before present in the near east fertile-crescent. From that point in time its movements are well documented in the archaeo-botanical record. After domestication it spread west along the north and south of the Mediterranean then north into the western fringes of Europe. It spread east to the Asian subcontinent, north through central Europe to Scandinavia and south to Egypt, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. During these migrations it would have encountered a broad range of environments. It is generally accepted that it would have survived by adapting to diverse local ecologies through a process of mutation and selection. We have been exploring whether we can detect and observe a record of the selective outcomes of barleys migrations by studying the exomes of a collection of barley accessions chosen to represent the geographic distribution of the species. The collection contains a mix of wild species, landraces and old cultivars.