Plant domestication began around 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia when early humans began artificially selecting traits in wild plants like wheat and barley. Two key areas for early domestication were the Balsas River valley in Mexico, where corn was first domesticated from teosinte, and the Yangtze River valley in China, where Asian rice originated. Plant domestication allowed nomadic humans to settle into agrarian societies and led to the development of early civilizations dependent on domesticated crops like wheat, rice, beans, and potatoes.

1. Plant Domestication
Teacher
Mr. Mark.
Students
Emiliano Sánchez Gómez
Gretha Marcial Sánchez
Laura Natividad Santiago Vignon
Valeria Hernández Martínez
Fernando Olvera López

3. What is plant domestication?
 Plant domestication is the
process in which plants
have been developed by
humans to evolve into crop
plants through artificial
selection.

4. How did it start?
 People first domesticated plants about
10,000 years ago, between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia
(Iraq).

5. Domestication in Mesopotamia
 The first domesticated
plants in Mesopotamia
were wheat, barley, lentils
and types of peas by
Eastern Asia, parts of Asia,
from Africa, North and
South America.

6. GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM
(GMO)
 A GMO is any organism whose DNA
has been altered using genetic
engineering techniques.

7. “BALSAS RIVER”
 This river, was one of the earliest corn
growing sites in México.
 It is known as the cradle of corn
domestication.
 Recently was found that México could be
the first site were corn was ever
domesticated.
 This river flows through a lot of places,
which are:
 Guerrero, Puebla, Morelos and México.

8. BALSAS RIVER.

9. BALSAS RIVER
 The Balsas River is a very important part of the story of domestication of plants
because it is the cradle of one of the most important things that now we use in
batteries, perfumes, it helps pregnant women, it´s a clean fuel additive to gasoline,
and, of course a food.

10. ASIAN RICE
There are two types of rice: the
African and the Asian.
It has been domesticated since
8000 BC
Asian rice originated in India,
Thailand, and Southern China
 It was first domesticated in the
region of the Yangtze River valley
in China.

11. ASIAN RICE

12. AFRICAN RICE
African rice was independently
domesticated about 3000 years
ago in the Niger River Delta
It's used in a ritualistic context
and as a treatment in African
traditional medicine.

13. RICE DOMESTICATION EXPANSION

14.  There are about 25,000 diferents species of wheat.
Archeologists do not really know when wheat was
domesticated, but they say it was between 12,000 and
23,000 years ago, and it took about 5000 years to be
domesticated.
WHEAT HISTORY

15. Where was wheat domesticated
Geneticists agree that wheat was domesticated
in the mountain regions of what is today Turkey.
Also, wheat is the second most cultivated crop in
the world.

16. Civilizations that depend on wheat
The oldest civilization that is known to have
depended on wheat is of Syria, but there are
remains of wheat found in China, Greece, Rome
and England.

17. Difference between wild wheat and
domestic wheat
 The oldest wheat, also
known as wild wheat, is
the strain of wheat that
wasn’t domesticated.
 Wild wheat is also known
as eacorn

18. Norman Borlaug
DWARF WHEAT
Norman Borlaug was a
geneticist, humanitarian and
Nobel Laureat who has been
called the father of the great
agricultural revolution. He
created a new strain of wheat
that has saved over a billion
lives in 40 years

19. Why wheat is so important
 Wheat is the 2nd leading crop
in the world. Also it is the most
consumed crop. It also can
affect the economy, and is so
important that some states
depend on wheat for their
income.

20. CORN
 Corn was domesticated from its wild grass
ancestor, 8,700 years ago, in Central Balsas
River Valley of Mexico. Maiz is the largest
grass on earth.
 Studies, confirmed that corn was derived
from teosinte. There were 5 species of
teosinte in México, but the teosinte species
that was closest to corn was Balsas River
teosinte.
 Since then, corn is used for a lot of things.
 Scientists discovered that Balsas River
teosinte was the most similar to corn
because they did a DNA test with both.

21. CORN DOMESTICATION

22. CORN DOMESTICATION.
In the last page, we could see how corn has
evolved.
The teosinte is the first one in the left in both
photos. This thing doesn´t look very much
like the corn we actually know.
The corn is the one at the right.
All these changes that corn presents from its
wild grass ancestor have been produced by
plant domestication.

23. The Bean
The common bean is one
of the most important
domestic legumes in the
world.

24.  The global harvest today
has been estimated at
18.7 million tons and it is
grown in nearly 150
countries on an
estimated 27.7 million
hectares.

25.  Beans were domesticated in two places: the Andes mountains of
Peru, and the Lerma-Santiago basin of Mexico.

26.  The main difference between wild and cultivated
beans are, well, domestic beans are less
exciting. Of course, there is a significant
increase in seed weight.

27.  The study suggests that the wild form spread
from Mesoamerica, into Ecuador and Columbia
and then into the Andes, where reduced the
gene diversity, at some time before
domestication.

28. POTATO DOMESTICATION
 The potato as we know it
today is far different than the
plant first seen by humans
many years ago.

29.  The first people to encounter the
potato were those located along the
west coast of South America towards
the end of the last Ice Age.

30. Did you know…
 During the Alaskan Klondike gold
rush, potatoes were practically worth
their weight in gold. Potatoes were
valued for their vitamin C.

31.  In October 1995, the
potato became the first
vegetable to be grown
in space.

32.  The spread of potatoes
from Andean highlands to
the coast and the rest of
the Americas was a slow
process.

33. CONCLUSION
 Plant domestication was clearly one of the most important
advancements of man. Once agriculture developed, it spread all around
the world, and it let nomads to be sedentary.
 That’s how nomads stopped walking around and stayed in one place
and planted their own food and let people grow in bigger groups.
 We should be very proud of our ancestors because they really, really
made a big effort to discover new things. Without them we wouldn´t
have a lot of technology.