Plant Domestication and Crop Evolution

Dear Colleagues,

Domestication is a good model for the study of evolutionary processes because of the recent evolution of crop species (~12,000 years ago), the key role of selection in their origins, and good archaeological and historical data on their spread and diversification. Domestication has a profound impact on crops. In the past 20 years, the genetic structure of crop domestication and the selection characteristics of domesticated species have been the foci of molecular genetics research. Today, with the development of genomic techniques, genomics are widely applied to crop domestication studies, which has significantly accelerated our understanding of genetic diversity and molecular evolution. In addition, genomic technologies have also provided support for studies on plant domestication and crop evolution.

This Topic aims at promoting discussions on the issues of plant domestication research, including (but not limited to) the following issues:

• The geography of plant domestication;
• The time frame and pace of plant domestication;
• The genetic or genomic basis for domestication.

Dr. Junhua Peng
Dr. Fabrizio Grassi
Topic Editors