Image: Lauren Eserman, one of our PBIO grad students, was recently awarded a DDIG grant. Her project is titled "Evolution of polyploidy and storage roots in sweet potato and its wild relatives" and it has three aims: 1) Estimating the evolutionary relationships among sweet potato and its wild relatives, 2) characterizing the diversity in root traits and polyploidy in this group, and 3) testing whether polyploidy played a role in the evolution of storage roots. Way to go, Lauren! *photo of I. trifida, a wild tetraploid relative of sweet potato; this particular accession was collected in Venezuela
