Heated debate over who planted first sunflower 22:00 28 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Colin Barras Could raking over the ashes of past civilisations help tackle the current food crisis? David Lentz at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, thinks so. Genetic information from wild strains of domestic crops could help to improve crop yield, he says, making it important to identify the point of domestication. That makes his controversial theory that the sunflower was domesticated in Mexico at least 4000 years ago more than just a matter of ancient history. "If we are to improve the sunflower crop, we need...