Human management and hybridization shape treegourd fruits in the Brazilian Amazon Basin.

ABSTRACT: Local people's perceptions of cultivated and wild agrobiodiversity, as well as their management of hybridization are still understudied in Amazonia. Here we analyze domesticated treegourd (Crescentia cujete), whose versatile fruits have technological, symbolic, and medicinal uses. A wild relative (C. amazonica) of the cultivated species grows spontaneously in Amazonian flooded forests. We demonstrated, using whole chloroplast sequences and nuclear microsatellites, that the two species are strongly differentiated. Nonetheless, they hybridize readily throughout Amazonia and the proportions of admixture correlate with fruit size variation of cultivated trees. New morphotypes arise from hybridization, which are recognized by people and named as local varieties. Small hybrid fruit

SUBMITTER: Ambrosio Moreira P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5469164 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature