Aboriginal people harvested this native grass for millennia. Scientists have now found an odd trait in its DNA

Channel millet (_Echinochloa turneriana_). Chris Haikings Seen from the air, Channel Country resembles a vibrant and vast tapestry, with a network of waterways crisscrossing the land. Spread across more than 280,000 square kilometres in outback Australia, it is one of the world’s last free-flowing desert river systems. In the heart of Channel Country, in southwest Queensland, live the Mithaka people whose ancestors over at least the past 3,000 years played a key role in the development of a…