A 3,000-year-old Egyptian emmer wheat genome reveals dispersal and domestication history.

ABSTRACT: Tetraploid emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccon) is a progenitor of the world's most widely grown crop, hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), as well as the direct ancestor of tetraploid durum wheat (T. turgidum subsp. turgidum). Emmer was one of the first cereals to be domesticated in the old world; it was cultivated from around 9700 BC in the Levant^1,2 and subsequently in south-western Asia, northern Africa and Europe with the spread of Neolithic agriculture^3,4. Here, we report a whole-genome sequence from a museum specimen of Egyptian emmer wheat chaff, ¹⁴C dated to the New Kingdom, 1130-1000 BC. Its genome shares haplotypes with modern domesticated emmer at loci that are associated with shattering, seed size and germination, as well as with

SUBMITTER: Scott MF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6858886 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature