Her research interests center on the ethnobotany, systematics, evolution, and conservation of crop plants and their wild relatives. She studies agrobiodiversity, especially the domestication of crops, their evolution under human influence, and their conservation biology. Current projects include research on the phylogenetics and morphological evolution of the genus Oxalis, the origins of polyploidy and domestication of the Andean tuber crop "oca," Oxalis tuberosa, and the distribution of clones of oca in traditional Andean agriculture. Her lab also studies organic acids in oca, biochemistry of traditional Chinese medicinal plants, and the origins of domestication in Chenopodium. She teaches UW-Madison’s first ethnobotany course.