For decades, scientists knew that upland cotton, the species behind around 90% of the world's natural textile fibre, was domesticated somewhere in the Americas, but could not say exactly where. A new genomic study has now provided the answer, tracing the crop's origins to the coastal scrublands of northwestern Yucatán, where farmers worked thousands of years before the Maya.
Computer scientists have reconstructed one of the most complete genomes of a top cotton species, which now give scientists a more complete picture of how wild cotton was domesticated over time and may help to strengthen and protect the crop for farmers.
