Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
studies led to the transformation of artichoke from a perennial, vegeta-
tively propagated crop into an annual, seed-planted vegetable, adjusted
to modern, mechanized cultivation and new successful cultivars
(Basnizky and Zohary 1987, 1994) as shown in the frontpiece photo-
graph taken in the 1990s.
Several important fruit trees originated fromwild species still found in
the Near East, and thus Zohary
'
s attention naturally focused on the olive,
grape, date, and
fig (Zohary and Spiegel-Roy 1975). Domestication of all
four fruit trees was associated with changes in their breeding behavior,
especially the adoption of vegetative propagation. Numerous archaeo-
logical remains suggest that domestication of these fruit trees took place
several thousands of years after the establishment of Neolithic agricul-
ture in the Near East, which was originally based on cereals (wheat and
barley) and pulses (pea and lentil). Zohary also published numerous
articles on the wild relatives and domestication of other fruit trees,
including plum (Zohary 1992), almond (Browicz and Zohary 1996;
Zohary 1998), pistachio (Zohary 1996), wild apple and pear (Zohary
1997), and carob (Zohary 2002).
IV. THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
OF DANIEL ZOHARY
Danny Zohary
c career was largely based on his
unusual combination of interests and expertise, which originated in
his family background as well as in his early academic training. As a
boy he became a competent
'
s successful scienti
field botanist, learning plant systematics
from his father Michael Zohary, who was an expert on the rich
flora of
Israel and the Near East. At an early age he could identify most plants
in their natural habitats and acquired a profound understanding of the
roles different species had in the so-called plant community, consist-
ing of various species that commonly associate with each other and are
usually found together in a de
ned habitat, of a unique ecology. As a
student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the late 1940s and
early 1950s, Danny majored in Botany and Geology, wrote his MSc
thesis on plant communities in the Negev Desert, and published the
first vegetation map of the Negev. When he went to Berkeley in the
1950s, Zohary became a real geneticist. He learned cytogenetics from
Spencer Brown and plant evolution (especially polyploidy) from
G. Ledyard Stebbins, his Ph.D. adviser. This unique combination of
skills was the foundation for his proli
cscienti
c work in the subse-
quent 50
-
60 years.
