Claim · model-written summary
Simple vegetative propagation made the four fruit trees preadapted for early domestication.
Verbatim
e0“Olive, grape, date, and fig can be vegetatively propagated by simple techniques (cuttings, basal knobs, suckers) and were thus preadapted for domestication early in the development of agriculture.”
Title
Beginnings of Fruit Growing in the Old World
Daniel Zohary; Pinhas Spiegel-Roy Science 1975. doi:10.1126/science.187.4174.319
Other claims from this paper (7)
- Observation Olive, grape, date and fig were the first important horticultural additions to Mediterranean grain agriculture.
- Observation These fruit trees were most likely domesticated in the Near East in protohistoric time.
- Observation The fruit trees became important food elements in the early Bronze Age.
- Mechanism Domestication of all four fruit trees involved a shift from sexual reproduction to vegetative clonal propagation.
- Mechanism Clonal propagation limited selection and fruit set under cultivation.
- Observation Each classic fruit tree has interconnected wild, weedy, feral and domesticated types with occasional hybridization.
- Mechanism Introgression from diverse wild gene pools facilitated variation in domesticated crops.