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Geographic distribution and domestication of wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides)

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Abstract

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for the development of human societies. Crops such as wheat, barley, lentil, pea and chickpea played a crucial role in the establishment of complex civilizations in south west Asia. Wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides) was one of the first cereals to be domesticated in the Fertile Crescent between c. 12,000 and c. 10,000 years ago. This step provided the key for subsequent bread wheat evolution. Wild emmer is found today in the western Fertile Crescent in Jordan, Syria and Israel, the central part of southeastern Turkey and mountain areas in eastern Iraq and western Iran. In this review, we summarize issues concerning geography and domestication of wild emmer wheat based on published molecular and archaeobotanical data and on our recent findings. We suggest that modern domestic tetraploid wheats derived from wild emmer lines from southeast Turkey. However, our understanding of emmer domestication is not complete. The “dispersed-specific” domestication model proposed for einkorn might well be appropriate also for emmer.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Sigi Effgen for excellent technical assistance during the last years. We are grateful to Ofer Bar-Yosef, Klaus Schmidt, Reinder Neef, Andrea Brandolini, Karl Hammer, Ekaterina Badaeva, Fedor Konovalov, Andrey Pomortsev, Nicolay Goncharov, Jacques David, Angela Schlumbaum and Eitan Millet for discussions, to Alexander Walther for GIS based map production. We are greatly indebted to Moshe Feldman and Bill Martin and also to Sue Colledge for providing much of the data in Table 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Field Crops, University of Çukurova, 01330, Adana, Turkey

    Hakan Özkan

  2. Archéorient CNRS UMR 5133, Université de Lyon II, Antenne d’Archéorient, Jalès, Berrias, St-Paul-le-Jeune, France

    George Willcox

  3. Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Genebank/Genome Diversity, Corrensstrasse 3, 06466, Gatersleben, Germany

    Andreas Graner & Benjamin Kilian

  4. Fondazione Parco Tecnologico Padano, Lodi, Italy

    Francesco Salamini

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  1. Hakan Özkan
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This article is dedicated to P. Hanelt’s 80th birthday, plant taxonomist and teacher.

Note: This is the first paper of a series of articles that came out of the international and interdisciplinary workshop “Cereal Diversity, Plant Domestication and Human History in the Fertile Crescent” held at the University of Çukurova, Adana, Turkey at the 10–15 of May 2009 organized by Hakan Özkan (Çukurova University) and Benjamin Kilian (Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, IPK). Twenty-three scientists (from ten countries) from different fields of research presented and discussed their ideas. Two days of presentations were followed by a field trip.

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Özkan, H., Willcox, G., Graner, A. et al. Geographic distribution and domestication of wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides). Genet Resour Crop Evol 58, 11–53 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-010-9581-5

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