Genetic erosion in domesticated barley and a hypothesis of a North African centre of diversity.

ABSTRACT: Barley is one of the founder crops of the Neolithic transition in West Asia. While recent advances in genomics have provided a rather detailed picture of barley domestication, there are contradictory views on how the domestication process affected genetic diversity. We set out to revisit this question by integrating public DNA sequencing data from ancient barley and wide collections of extant wild and domesticated accessions. Using two previously overlooked approaches - analyses of chloroplast genomes and genome-wide proportions of private variants - we found that the barley cultivated six millennia ago was genetically unique and more diverse when compared to extant landraces and cultivars. Moreover, the chloroplast genomes revealed a link between the ancient barley, an obscure wild genoty

SUBMITTER: Civan P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11303984 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature