A team of scientists from different institutions led by the University of
Missouri has mapped the genetic family of three vegetables - canola,
rutabaga, and Siberian kale - to identify the gene selected for by early
farmers.

To identify the genes that were selected during domestication, J. Chris
Pires, a professor of biological sciences with the Christopher S. Bond Life
Sciences Center at the University of Missouri and his colleagues sequenced
the nuclear and chloroplast genomes from 183 accessions of Brassica napus,
including representatives from all morphotypes, as well as 174 accessions of
potential progenitors. The team identified over 370,000 small variations in
the genetic code, which they used to determine how the diverse accessions
are related to one other as well as to B. rapa and B. oleracea.

The resulting family tree shows that rutabaga, canola, and Siberian kale do
not have separate origins. It also shows that all B. napus accessions are
sister to all morphotypes of B. oleracea and all morphotypes of B. rapa, the
proposed progenitors, which suggests that B. napus comes from either an
early form or an extinct ancestor. They also found a lot of genome mixing
among rutabaga, canola, and Siberian kale as well as with the presumed
parental species.

[biology.missouri.edu]
tabaga/