Domestication Syndrome, Anthropogenic involvment in genetic evolution"

Introduction

Humans have been living as a species for a long time, and then they started the domestication of wild animals and plants and left their dependency on hunting. According to research, humans domesticated crops 10,000 years ago. Domestication of plants from the Poaceae family gave humans a sense of food security.?They changed the selective species from wild to domesticated, and this change is also known as domestication syndrome. It is the genetic modification of a wild species to create a new form of an altered organism that meets humanistic needs. Common crops domesticated long ago were wheat, rice, maize, and barley.

Charles Darwin's words about domestication

“When I started my research, I thought studying domesticated animals and plants would be the best way to understand how species evolved. I wasn't wrong. Even though our knowledge is incomplete, studying domesticated species is the most reliable way to learn about evolution. I believe these studies are important, even though many naturalists have ignored them.”

Impact

Wild plant species had strategies to disperse seeds, like opening seed pods, but it was reduced in species that were grown by men. Seeds of domesticated plants are larger in size as compared to their wild ancestors. Plant morphology also experienced change. Ancestors of some chosen plants had toxic compounds, but their domestication reduced such compounds. In the case of corn, its domesticated version has larger seeds and reduced seed dispersal in comparison to its wild ancestor, which was in Mexico 9000 years ago. Wheat has also experienced similar changes to corn in the process of human selection. Wheat also experienced duplication of its genome, as wildly grown wheat species are hexaploid. Modern-day rice is a descendant of its ancestors that were in the Himalayas and southern China 8000 years ago. Rice in modern ages has a reduction in grain shattering, little seed dormancy, synchrony in seed maturity, reduced tillers, increased tiller erectness, and an increase in panicle branches. Rachis of wheat and barley also experience this syndrome, whether they are brittle or nonbrittle.

Conclusion

Domestication syndrome is a case of traits that arise during the domestication of plants and animals. No doubt, domestication led to a reduction in genetic diversity, increased susceptibility to diseases and pests, and a reliance on human intervention for survival but these changes made our chosen plants more desirable as larger fruits, less defensive, easy to harvest, free from toxic compounds, and more traits for human service.