The taming of the weed: Developmental plasticity facilitated plant domestication.

ABSTRACT: Our experiments with crop progenitors have demonstrated that these species exhibit dramatic plasticity in key traits that are affected by domestication, including seed and fruit morphology. These traits can be altered by cultivating crop progenitors for a single season, in the absence of any selection for domesticated phenotypes. We hypothesize that cultivation caused environmental shifts that led to immediate phenotypic changes in crop progenitors via developmental plasticity, similar to tameness in animals. Here we focus on the loss or reduction of germination inhibitors in an annual seed crop because seeds with high dormancy are undesirable in crops, and also present a serious barrier to selective pressures that arise from seed-saving and planting by humans. Data from four seasons of ob

SUBMITTER: Mueller NG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10081796 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature