Current research in the Hufford Lab is focused on the demography and local adaptation of ancient farmer varieties of maize known as "landraces", the evolutionary significance of gene flow across taxa in the genus Zea, and genome assembly and comparative genomics of teosinte and the basal grass species Streptochaeta angustifolia. We are interested in studying both the evolution and ecology of crops and their wild relatives with a particular focus on maize and the teosintes. Research areas include parallel adaptation in maize landraces, gene flow and introgression in the genus Zea, and centromere drive in the family Poaceae.