This document discusses the process of plant domestication. It begins by defining domestication and explaining how early humans selected traits like large plant parts and thick flesh in domesticated food plants. It then provides details on the benefits of domestication, the five levels of domestication, and the domestication syndrome. The document also examines outstanding questions in domestication research and insights from archeological and genetic studies. Specifically, it notes how domestication traits are influenced by a small number of regulatory genes and allows for rapid evolution.

1. Assignment
Subject : Crop Evolution GPB821
Presented by: Mr. Indranil Bhattacharjee
Student I.D. No.: 17PHGPB102
Presented to : Dr. G.M. Lal
Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology &
Sciences
Allahabad-211007

2. What is Domestication?
More than just planting seeds or transplanting
Most plants inedible or otherwise unusable
Most plants unsuited for primitive domestication
Not every locality has abundant plants suitable for human use
Need nutritional balance
Requires changes in plant characteristics
Most domesticated food plants have been selected for:
Large plant parts
Soft edible tissue
Thick flesh with intense color
Fruits attached to tough stems

3. How much domestication-
About 5000 species have been grown for human food – less than 1%
of all plant species thought to exist
Today about 150 species are commercially grown for food (not
including spices)
About 50 very productive species supply almost all of our caloric
needs.
Benefits of Domestication-
10,000 years ago, before agriculture began, the world’s total human
population was about 5 million.
There was one person for every 25 square kilometers. Today we
have more than 7 billion people, with a density of just over 25 people
per square kilometer.
As agriculture developed humans selected for:
1. Plants that provide enough calories to meet our basic energy needs.
This usually comes from cereal grain or root carbohydrates.
2. We also selected for a balanced nutritional intake - this tends to
develop in any system where the cultivator eats and depends upon on
what he/she grows.

4. Five Levels of Domestication
1. Unconscious selection of plants for desirable traits (9000 BC)
2. Conscious cultivation of plants with desired traits (BC)
3. Deliberate breeding to improve traits (1700)
4. Scientific breeding: genetic mechanism known and exploited (1900)
5. Direct genetic manipulation (2000)
Domestication-
It’s the process of bringing wild species under human management. Which began
~ 10,000 years ago when man began agriculture
First domesticated plants were cereals, legumes and other field crop species
(fruits and roots)
Plant domestication-
Domesticated plants differ from their wild progenitors in several
morphophysiological traits, most of which are associated with seed retention and
germination, growth habit, size, coloration, and/or edibility of economically
important organs
Domestication syndrome (DS)-
Denotes differences between domesticated plants and their wild progenitors.

5. Domestication:
Evolutionary interaction where a producer species gains new
dispersal mechanisms while its performance is controlled for the
benefit (commonly nutritional) of a consumer species. E.g. Ants,
beetles, humans, and bacteria have evolved that relationship
with domesticates as diverse as basidiomycetes, seed plants, and
bacteriophages.
Domestication syndrome:
The set of phenotypic traits hypothesized to reflect convergent
evolution of crops to artificial selection by humans or to natural
selection under cultivation. In a stricter sense, only those traits
differing between progenitors and the very earliest domesticates
descending from a given center of origin are true signatures of
domestication.

6. Domestication of plants progresses through
evolutionary divergences, whereby one or several populations of
founder gene pools gradually acquire variable degrees of
geographical or genetic isolation from their wild relatives.
After divergence, plant reproduction and geographical spread
of crops becomes increasingly dependent on humans.
Under cultivation, selective forces differ strongly from those
prevailing in the wild and include both strong directional
selection by humans and natural selection caused by cultivation
conditions (i.e., availability and nature of resources, and intensity
and frequency of disturbances).

7. Evolution under cultivation:
Changes in allelic frequencies of a focal crop plant after its
domestication. It is driven by a diverse range of natural and
directed selective pressures.
Functional trait:
Any morphological, physiological, or phenological character that
impacts fitness indirectly via its effects on growth, reproduction,
and survival.
Gene pool of a crop:
The alleles contained within the boundaries of the taxonomic
circumscription of a crop, including those of its closest wild
relatives.

8. Selection under Domestication -
When different genotypes present in a population reproduce at
different rates, it is called selection.
A population may be simply defined as the group of individuals,
which mate or can mate freely with each other.
Selection is grouped into two types, on the basis of the agency
responsible for it
(1)natural
(2)artificial

9. Natural Selection-
The selection that occurs due to natural forces like climate, soil,
biological factors (e.g., diseases, insect pests, etc.) and other
factors of the environment is called natural selection.
In 1962, Nichlson proposed that natural selection may be seen
to operate through two mechanisms, viz.;
(l) Environmental selection
(2) Competition.
Environmental selection acts against all such genotypes that are
unable to cope with the environmental stresses.

10. Natural selection-
It is through competition occurs in crop populations where a plant
takes up more water, nutrients or light than another at the expense
of the other.
Artificial Selection-
It is carried out by man and is confined to domesticated species. It
allows only the selected plants to reproduce, ordinarily makes plants
more useful to man and generally leads to a marked decline in
genetic variability in the selected progenies/populations.
Types of Selection-
1) Directional selection,
2) Stabilizing selection
3) Disruptive selection.

11. Directional Selection-
When individuals having the extreme phenotype for a trait or a
group of traits are selected for, it is called directional selection.
Stabilizing Selection-
When selection favours the intermediate phenotype and acts
against the extreme phenotypes, it is termed as stabilizing
selection.
Disruptive Selection-
In each 'ecological niche' a different 'phenotypic optima' is
selected for so that the population ultimately consists of two or
more recognizable forms; such a selection is called disruptive
selection.

12. Constraints on crop evolution:
Biophysical, physiological, developmental, or genetic limitation
that, given values for trait X, hinders the expression of the potential
range of variation of trait Y. Constraints can limit crop phenotypic
expression to a variable degree, depending on the nature and
tightness of the connections. Directed artificial selection on trait X
might imply indirect selection on variation in trait(s) Y(s).
Directed artificial selection:
Intentional breeding for traits, or combinations of traits, that
increases the benefit that humans obtain from crop plants.
Synonymous terms include ‘conscious selection’ and ‘deliberate
selection’.

13. Natural selection under cultivation:
Forces promoting differences in survival and reproduction between
individuals of cultivated plant populations. These comprise various
selective factors, including selective pressures that differ between
growing under cultivation and growing in the wild. Terms such as
operational selection, unconscious selection, or automatic selection
have been used to partially or wholly account for these factors.
Phenotypic space:
A description of the phenotype, conceptualized by analogy with the
niche as an n-dimensional space defined by n independent
phenotypic traits.

14. Plant domestication:
The evolutionary process whereby a wild seed plant acquires
phenotypic features that make its survival and reproduction
dependent on humans. This process occurs in the early phases of
cultivation.
Wild progenitor (or wild ancestor):
The closest wild relative of an existent crop. For many crop species,
domestication was a complex evolutionary process where the
assignment of a unique ancestral wild gene pool is problematic.

15. Outstanding questions
Is the domestication syndrome a tenable concept, applicable to most
domestication processes? If not, are there other plant traits that might
be signatures of domestication and that should be thus investigated?
How have the environmental conditions that plants have experienced
changed during domestication histories?
Plants exert a strong impact over ecosystem processes and the
dynamics of co-occurring biota. Provided that plant phenotypes have
changed during crop evolution, are those impacts of different nature
and magnitude now, as compared with those of their wild progenitors?
Several factors drive the evolution of traits under domestication,
including artificial selection, natural selection, and constraints on trait
variance. Can we develop experiments to investigate the relative
importance of each of them?
Can we devise methods to pinpoint wild plants that make good
candidates for future domestication on the basis of their functional
profiles?

16. Archeological and genetic research
insights
Prominent traits have a tendency to converge as a
‘domestication syndrome’ in major cereals and several pulses.
Those traits include increases in the size of harvestable organs,
loss of seed dispersal mechanisms, promotion of erect growth
habits, or loss of photoperiod sensitivity.
Domestication traits tend to be influenced by a small number
of regulatory genes, which facilitate rapid evolution.

17. Consequences of domestication in light of
ecological theory at three biological levels:
Individual traits,
Integrated phenotype, and
Beyond the plant phenotype.
Figure 1. Schematic representation of
three drivers of crop evolution, with
synonymous terminology. Overlapping
areas allow for interactions among
drivers. For example, the evolution of
seed size, a key trait in domestication
research, can be affected by both
deliberate and natural selection, and
by constraints between size and
number of offspring. The relative
importance of each driver to explain
patterns of seed size evolution under
domestication remains unknown.

18. Putative effects of domestication at three biological levels

19. Conclusion
Understanding of domestication through genetic and
archeological approaches will provide significant insights.
Supplementing study through ecological perspective will
provide a better understanding of the drivers and consequences
of domes-tication.
Some recent discoveries, e.g. increased competitive ability for
light and augmented litter decomposability, are good examples of
the benefits of this approach.
Ecology can take advantage of the global-scale availability of
functional data and tools on wild plants to quantitatively identify
and evaluate candidates for a new generation of domesticated
crops.
Science-oriented selection and domestication of wild species
has been seldom pursued, but plant comparative ecology is well
placed to lead such search. This could provide invaluable revenue
for decades of past and future investment in ecological aspects of
research in domestication.

20. References
Charles Darwin. 1868 The Variation of Animals and
Plants under Domestication. (Vol. I) original letters
Paul Gepts, et al. 2012 Biodiversity in Agriculture_
Domestication, Evolution, and Sustainability Cambridge
University Press