Dead seeds telling stories about farming in the far north. | Jenny Hagenblad | TEDxNorrkopingED

Описание: Not all historical events have been recorded in documents or artefacts surviving to the present. However, the consequences of historical events can also be documented in the genes of the descendants of those who lived through the event. In the late 19th century northern Fennoscandia experienced repeated crop failure resulting in famine and mass migration. Historical documents bear witness of grain being sent North as relief aid, probably limiting the number of deaths from starvation. To what extent the grain was also used for seeding fields is not known. Fortunately, seed samples from the region, collected both before and after the famine years, have been stored in museums. Genetic analyses of these seed samples give clues about how the grain relief was used and also hints at how the vicar Lars Levi Laestadius influenced the region in more ways than by saving souls. Jenny did her undergraduate and graduate studies at Lund University leading to a PhD in genetics, with the graduate studies partly carried out at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. After her dissertation, Jenny went to Edinburgh University as a post doctoral research fellow and Jenny have since worked at Uppsala University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and is currently at IFM - Biology at Linköping University. Her main research interest lies within evolutionary genetics and how genetic data can be used to understand the evolutionary history of a species. Jenny have worked with different plant model system and she is currently studying the evolution of cultivated plants. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx