Podcast: Crop Evolution and Human History

In this episode of Bichitro Biggan, we welcome renowned geneticist and agricultural innovator Dr Abed Chaudhury, discoverer of Panchabrihi perennial rice. How did the staple grains that nourish humanity – rice and wheat – first emerge? Were they always abundant food sources, or did ancient wild grasses transform across millenia of human stewardship?

In this deep exploration, we trace crop evolution and human history across thousands of years of co-evolution. Discover how early farmers directed rice adaptation and how complex natural hybridisations yielded modern wheat.

Key Topics Covered:

• The ancestral origins of wild rice and wheat and their journey into cultivated staples.

• The co-evolution of humanity and cultivated plants.

• The genetics of domestication: how non-shattering seed mutations turned wild grasses into agricultural crops.

• The fascinating evolutionary transition from diploid to hexaploid wheat.

• How early agriculturalists acted as nature’s unconscious genetic engineers.

Featured Guest: Dr Abed Chaudhury