Archaeology Brown Bag Lecture Series

A summarization of research on the origins of oca, Oxalis tuberosa, a tuber crop grown and domesticated in the Andes of South America. Oca is octoploid, with eight sets of chromosomes (Bx), so the question of its origins includes the origins of each of its genomes. The research has involved field work in Bolivia and Peru. Additional lab work has been carried out to study the DNA of the domesticated crop and its wild relatives to trace their evolutionary history. Field work within the past...