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The structure of wild and domesticated emmer wheat populations, gene flow between them, and the site of emmer domestication

Theoretical and Applied Genetics volume 114, pages 947–959 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The domestication of emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum spp. dicoccoides, genomes BBAA) was one of the key events during the emergence of agriculture in southwestern Asia, and was a prerequisite for the evolution of durum and common wheat. Single- and multilocus genotypes based on restriction fragment length polymorphism at 131 loci were analyzed to describe the structure of populations of wild and domesticated emmer and to generate a picture of emmer domestication and its subsequent diffusion across Asia, Europe and Africa. Wild emmer consists of two populations, southern and northern, each further subdivided. Domesticated emmer mirrors the geographic subdivision of wild emmer into the northern and southern populations and also shows an additional structure in both regions. Gene flow between wild and domesticated emmer occurred across the entire area of wild emmer distribution. Emmer was likely domesticated in the Diyarbakir region in southeastern Turkey, which was followed by subsequent hybridization and introgression from wild to domesticated emmer in southern Levant. A less likely scenario is that emmer was domesticated independently in the Diyarbakir region and southern Levant, and the Levantine genepool was absorbed into the genepool of domesticated emmer diffusing from southeastern Turkey. Durum wheat is closely related to domesticated emmer in the eastern Mediterranean and likely originated there.

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Acknowledgments

We thank O.D. Anderson, M.D. Gale, A. Graner, G.E. Hart, A. Kleinhofs, M.E. Sorrells, and M.K. Walker-Simmons for sharing clones with us, H.E. Bockelman, S. Jana, B.L. Johnson, C.O. Qualset, R. Papa, and J. Valkoun for supplying the seeds of plants used in this study. We also thank E.D. Akhunov for valuable assistance with statistical analyses and P. Morrell for valuable discussions. Financial support from USDA/ACSREES/NRICGP by grant 99-35301-7905 to J. Dvorak is acknowledged.

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Author notes

  1. Z.-L. Yang

    Present address: Seminis Vegetable Seeds, 37437 State Hwy 16, Woodland, CA, 95695, USA

Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    M.-C. Luo, Z.-L. Yang, F. M. You & J. Dvorak

  2. Plant Germplasm Institute, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Mozume, Muko, Kyoto, 617-0001, Japan

    T. Kawahara

  3. Department of Botany & Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    J. G. Waines

Authors
  1. M.-C. Luo
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  2. Z.-L. Yang
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  3. F. M. You
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  4. T. Kawahara
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  5. J. G. Waines
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  6. J. Dvorak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Dvorak.

Additional information

Communicated by T. Lübberstedt.

Electronic supplementary material

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S1. Plant accessions used in the study and their original locations (RTF 52.1 kb)

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Luo, MC., Yang, ZL., You, F.M. et al. The structure of wild and domesticated emmer wheat populations, gene flow between them, and the site of emmer domestication. Theor Appl Genet 114, 947–959 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-006-0474-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-006-0474-0

Keywords

  • Amplify Fragment Length Polymorphism
  • Durum Wheat
  • Emmer Wheat
  • Wild Emmer
  • Emmer Accession