Steve Cannon, USDA-ARS Research Geneticist and adjunct assistant professor in the Agronomy Department at Iowa State University, gave a biology seminar talk on September 23 titled “Taxonomic insights into crop evolution and domestication.”
The largest number of domesticated crops come from two plant families: the grasses, and the legumes. Approximately a dozen grasses and two dozen legume species have been domesticated — each one independently, from distinct wild species. This means that over an over, a small number of critical traits have been selected by early farmers: for example, seed size, non-shattering pods, and plant stature.
Which of those traits have been selected from corresponding genetic locations across the species that have been domesticated? And what important traits exist in these plant families to have led to so many domestications? Plant taxonomies, genome sequences, and evolutionary histories can give clues — and also suggests some species that may be candidates for new crop species.