Crop wild relative was Nikolai Vavilov, the Russian botanist who first realized the importance of crop wild relatives in the early 20th century. Genetic material from CWRs has been utilized by humans for thousands of years to improve the quality and yield of crops. Farmers have used traditional breeding methods for millennia, wild maize ("Zea mexicana") is routinely grown alongside maize to promote natural crossing and improve yields. More recently, plant breeders have utilised CWR genes to improve a wide range of crops like rice ("Oryza sativa"), tomato ("Solanum lycopersicum") and grain legumes. CWRs have contributed many useful genes to crop plants, and
Helitron (biology) Helitron (biology) Helitrons are one of the three groups of eukaryotic class 2 transposable elements (TEs) so far described. They are the eukaryotic rolling-circle transposable elements which are hypothesized to transpose by a rolling circle replication mechanism via a single-stranded DNA intermediate. They were first discovered in plants ("Arabidopsis thaliana" and "Oryza sativa") and in the nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans", and now they have been identified in a diverse range of species, from protists to mammals. Helitrons make up a substantial fraction of many genomes where non-autonomous elements frequently outnumber the putative autonomous partner. Helitrons seem to have a major role