Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The seminal publication in this area was that of Harlan and Zohary
(1966), which analyzed the distribution of wild barley (
H. spontaneum
,
2
n
=
14), diploid Einkorn wheat (
Triticum boeticum
,2
n
=
14), and tetra-
ploid Emmer wheat (
Triticum dicoccoides
,2
n
28) in the Near East. The
authors showed that the geographical distribution of these plant popu-
lations overlaps the earliest known sites of Neolithic farming in the area
known as the Fertile Crescent, and may well have been the sites where
agricultural practices were
=
first employed. These cereals were probably
first harvested in dense stands of the wild plants and subsequently,
∼
10,000 years ago, used for seed stocks; thus started the development of
agricultural practices and the establishment of Neolithic communities.
Agricultural domestication, however, was also associated with genetic
changes in the plants that facilitated the collection of seed (harvesting).
Thus, domestication of barley and wheat involved selection for non-
brittleness of the spikes, a characteristic of clear disadvantage to the
ancestral wild plants because it compromises seed dispersal. Moreover,
a signi
cant insight into the occurrence of present-day dense stands of
these wild cereals is that they are found in relatively undisturbed
ecological habitats, at the centers of distribution of the species, and
their robust morphology (along with large grain) suggests that they could
indeed be pro
tably harvested by man before they were fully domesti-
cated. At the perimeter of distribution of these wild cereals, more weedy
races occupy largely disturbed habitats; these do not form continuous
stands, and therefore Harlan and Zohary (1966) suggest that they were
less likely to have attracted the attention of ancient humans at the onset
of agriculture.
Zohary collaborated with the German botanist/archaeologist Maria
Hopf on the study of the origin of cultivated legumes (pulses). Their
conclusions about domestication of pulses (Zohary and Hopf 1973) were
based largely on carbonized seed remains at the sites of early Neolithic
farming villages in the Near East, as well as on cytogenetics and on
crosses in the laboratory between the cultivated and wild relatives, and
on the occasional
finding of wild populations containing plants of
intermediate morphologies. Thus, it was determined that cultivated
pea,
Pisum sativum
, probably originated from
Pisum humile
or
Pisum
elatius
(Ben-Zeev and Zohary 1973), and lentil (
Lens culinaris
) may have
originated from
Lens orientalis
(Zohary 1972; Gar
nkel et al. 1988). The
conclusions regarding the origins of broad bean and chickpea were
however more tentative (Zohary and Hopf 1973).
The artichoke (
Cynara scolymus
) is another crop that was thoroughly
investigated by Zohary and colleagues regarding its origin and domesti-
cation (Zohary and Basnizky 1975; Rottenberg and Zohary 1996). These
