Abstract
Plant breeding began when plants were brought into cultivation for human use, as early as 13,000 years ago in the Near East, and subsequently and independently in other parts of the world. Domestication, geographical dispersal to new environments and selection by farmers, resulted in numerous locally adapted landraces of cultivated plants. Examples of these processes are presented and discussed, as is the extensive dispersion and redistribution of crops which followed the discovery of the New World in 1492. The transfer of plant breeding from farmers to specialist breeders began during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continued in the nineteenth century with the introduction of planned hybridizations, following progress since 1682 in understanding sexual reproduction in plants. The foundations for scientific breeding were laid with Mendel’s work on the laws of inheritance, Darwin’s work on the evolutionary significance of the mating system and increased understanding of the cellular basis of life.
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Bradshaw, J.E. (2016). Domestication, Dispersion, Selection and Hybridization of Cultivated Plants. In: Plant Breeding: Past, Present and Future. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23285-0_1
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