It's disheartening 😔

Yep, admin contracts being cut short, doctoral fellowships (June'23) and researcher promotion (Feb'23) call evaluation not announced because of budget cuts, no news of postdoc fellowships call (Feb'24), notification of budget and salaries secured only until June. It's maddening...

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Felicitaciones y abrazo fuerte, hoy fue muy triste tratar de hacer algo en el trabajo 😞

This work was done collaboratelly with contributions from CERZOS (CONICET-UNS), INTA (EEA Corrientes, Concepción del Uruguay, and IABIMO), UMass-PlantBio, & funding from Agencia I+D+i, CONICET, INTA, Fulbright Program and NSF. 10/10 osf.io/pn98b/

We still have a lot to investigate about this incredibly interesting weed that profoundly affects rice productivity. Understanding its characteristics brings us several steps closer to improving its control and reducing production costs for farmers. 9/n

The aus weedy rice crossed with indica cultivars from the region, giving rise to hybrids. These hybrids rapidly spread thanks to the selection pressure imposed by herbicides in the last ~20 years with the commercialization of IMI-resistant cultivars. 8/n

This leads us to two hypotheses: 1) introduction through uncertified seed from the USA, or 2) de-domestication from cultivars with aus ancestry. The first is more likely given the history of rice cultivation in the country (see preprint). And what about the hybrids? 7/n

But that's not all, weedy rice from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay are closely related to each other and to that from the USA, and are predominantly aus or aus-indica hybrids. However, the aus ancestry in cultivars from Argentina and Brazil is not common. So what's going on? 6/n

By conducting GBS (15K SNPs) and comparing our data with that available online of weedy rice and cultivars from the region and the world, we determined that our weedy rice clusters with indica and aus types 5/n