Plant Domestication: Wild Date Palms Illuminate a Crop’s Sticky Origins

Plant Domestication and the Origins of Agriculture

Fusarium Wilt of Canary Island Date Palms

Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. canariensis has caused the death of hundreds of Canary Island date palms, Phoenix canariensis, in Sydney where they have been used prominently in landscape plantings. The fungus is spread in soil, by transplanting palms and on contaminated pruning implements and possibly by seed, birds and insects. Vegetative compatibility groupings (VCGs) were u...

Plant fitness assessment for wild relatives of insect resistant crops.

Risk assessments of new insect-resistant crops will need to estimate the potential for increased weediness of wild crop relatives as a consequence of gene flow. When field experiments are precluded by containment concerns, simulation experiments can identify hazards or measure expected differences between GMOs and parental plants. To measure plant fitness consequences of wild plant protection f...

The Domestication Syndrome in Phoenix dactylifera Seeds: Toward the Identification of Wild Date Palm Populations

Investigating crop origins is a priority to understand the evolution of plants under domestication, develop strategies for conservation and valorization of agrobiodiversity and acquire fundamental knowledge for cultivar improvement. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) belongs to the genus Phoenix, which comprises 14 species morphologically very close, sometimes hardly distinguishable. It has...

Origin and Domestication of Native Amazonian Crops

Molecular analyses are providing new elements to decipher the origin, domestication and dispersal of native Amazonian crops in an expanding archaeological context. Solid molecular data are available for manioc (Manihot esculenta), cacao (Theobroma cacao), pineapple (Ananas comosus), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) and guaraná (Paullinia cupana), while hot peppers (Capsicum spp.), inga (Inga eduli...