By Susan Milius
From Madison, Wis., at a meeting of the Botanical Society of America
Comparison between crop and wild sunflower genes suggests that the plant followed an easy route to domestication.
Archaeologists estimate that people transformed wild sunflowers into a user-friendly form some 4,000 years ago, explains John M. Burke, now at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The shift conferred traits such as self-fertilization and bigger seeds.