Evidence for Sorghum Domestication in Fourth Millennium BC Eastern Sudan: Spikelet Morphology from Ceramic Impressions of the Butana Group

Winchell, Frank; Stevens, Chris J.; Murphy, Claire; Champion, Louis; Fuller, Dorian Q.

doi:10.1086/693898

Cited by 139 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Apart from the early presence in the Nile valley of barley and wheat imported from Asia, currently five different centres of domestication of indigenous plants have been recognised in Africa, two of them being located in the Sahel/Savannah grass fields considered in this study . The first is located in eastern Sudanese savannahs, where new archaeobotanical evidence shows that sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor ) was already being cultivated between 3500 and 3000 BC and was later imported to India and elsewhere in Africa . The second, on the other side of the continent in the west African Sahel, is recognised as the centre of domestication of millet ( Pennisetum glaucum ), at least from 2500 BC .…”

Section: Non‐genetic Information On Sahel Peopling Historymentioning

confidence: 94%

“…26 The first is located in eastern Sudanese savannahs, where new archaeobotanical evidence shows that sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) was already being cultivated between 3500 and 3000 BC and was later imported to India and elsewhere in Africa. 27 The second, on the other side of the continent in the west African Sahel, is recognised as the centre of domestication of millet (Pennisetum glaucum), at least from 2500 BC. [28][29][30][31] This new practice spread quickly towards the southeast, in all west Africa and beyond.…”

Section: Non-genetic Information On Sahel Peopling Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Genetic history of the African Sahelian populations

Černý

Kulichová

Poloni

et al. 2018

HLA

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From a biogeographic perspective, Africa is subdivided into distinct horizontal belts. Human populations living along the Sahel/Savannah belt south of the Sahara desert have often been overshadowed by extensive studies focusing on other African populations such as hunter-gatherers or Bantu in particular. However, the Sahel together with the Savannah bordering it in the south is a challenging region where people had and still have to cope with harsh climatic conditions and show resilient behaviours. Besides exponentially growing urban populations, several local groups leading various lifestyles and speaking languages belonging to three main linguistic families still live in rural localities across that region today. Thanks to several years of consistent population sampling throughout this area, the genetic history of the African Sahelian populations has been largely reconstructed and a deeper knowledge has been acquired regarding their adaptation to peculiar environments and/or subsistence modes. Distinct exposures to pathogens-in particular, malaria-likely contributed to their genetic differentiation for HLA genes. In addition, although food-producing strategies spread within the Sahel/Savannah belt relatively recently, during the last five millennia according to recent archaeological and archaeobotanical studies, remarkable amounts of genetic differences are also observed between sedentary farmers and more mobile pastoralists at multiple neutral and selected loci, reflecting both demographic effects and genetic adaptations to distinct cultural traits, such as dietary habits.

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Section: Non‐genetic Information On Sahel Peopling Historymentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Non-genetic Information On Sahel Peopling Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic history of the African Sahelian populations

Černý

Kulichová

Poloni

et al. 2018

HLA

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“…S . bicolor race bicolor was the first race to be domesticated 19,20 , while the remaining four "modern" races exhibited parallel evolution for free-threshing grains.…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative evolutionary analysis and prediction of deleterious mutation patterns between sorghum and maize

Lozano

Gazave

Santos

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Sorghum and maize share a close evolutionary history that can be explored through comparative genomics. To perform a large-scale comparison of the genomic variation between these two species, we analyzed 13 million variants identified from whole genome resequencing of 468 sorghum lines together with 25 million variants previously identified in 1,218 maize lines.Deleterious mutations in both species were prevalent in pericentromeric regions, enriched in non-syntenic genes, and present at low allele frequencies. A comparison of deleterious burden between sorghum and maize revealed that sorghum, in contrast to maize, departed from the "domestication cost" hypothesis that predicts a higher deleterious burden among domesticates compared to wild lines. Additionally, sorghum and maize population genetic summary statistics were used to predict a gene deleterious index with an accuracy higher than 0.5. This research represents a key step towards understanding the evolutionary dynamics of deleterious variants in sorghum and provides a comparative genomics framework to start prioritizing them for removal through genome editing and breeding. 2 Main text: Sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) and maize ( Zea mays L.) are both members of the Poaceae family and often serve as a model system for comparative plant genomics. Their common Poaceae ancestor underwent a whole-genome duplication (WGD) event ~96 million years ago 1 , and a second WGD in maize corresponds closely with its divergence 12 million years ago from sorghum 2 . The role of polyploidization in maize diversification 1 makes the sorghum-maize system particularly powerful for comparative studies.A rchaeobotanical studies support a single sorghum domestication event around 3000 BC in Eastern Sudan 3 , with genetic studies supporting a potential second independent domestication center in west Africa 4,5 . Maize, in contrast, was domesticated once from teosinte in the Balsas river valley in central Mexico around 9000 years ago 6,7 . While some orthologs between these two species experienced parallel selection during domestication 8 , most domestication related genes appear to be drawn from a non-overlapping set 9 . It is well established that maize experienced a decline in effective population size due to a domestication bottleneck 10,11 that increased the burden of deleterious alleles in the domesticate compared to teosinte 12,13 .Evidence for reduced nucleotide diversity in landraces from a genetic bottleneck 5 or population size decline 14 has also been reported for sorghum.Sorghum has a hermaphroditic inflorescence, contributing to its predominantly self-pollinating nature. Domesticated sorghum has an estimated outcrossing rate of only 7 to 20% 9,15 , while the outcrossing rate tends to be higher (up to 70% 16 ) for weedy and wild sorghum. In contrast, maize and its wild progenitor teosinte are monoecious and generally outcrossing at a rate of over 90% 17 . In this study, we performed a joint analysis of functional variation in sorghum and 3 maize lines that span th...

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“…Sorghum was 104 improved in a diversity of environments and is a staple grain in various regions (Smith & 105 Frederiksen, 2000). Because Sorghum bicolor was originally domesticated c. 5,000 years 106 ago in eastern Africa (Wendorf et al, 1992;Mace et al, 2013;Winchell et al, 2017;107 Smith et al, 2019), we hypothesized that varying degrees of sensitivity and tolerance to 108 NaCl may exist in the different landraces. In this study, we included 21 diverse Sorghum 109 accessions representative of the different landraces (Table 1).…”

Section: Plant Materials 99mentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure inSorghumreveal diversity among domesticated landraces

Henderson

Crim

Cumming

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure in Sorghum reveal diversity among domesticated landraces ABSTRACT 1 Soil salinity negatively impacts plant function, development, and yield. Sorghum bicolor 2 is a staple crop known to be drought tolerant, to have adapted to a variety of conditions, 3 and to contain significant standing genetic diversity, making it an exemplary species to 4 study phenotypic and physiological variation in salinity tolerance. In our study, a diverse 5 group of sorghum landraces and accessions was first rank-ordered for salinity tolerance 6 and then individuals spanning a wide range of response were analyzed for foliar proline 7 and ion accumulation. We found that, while proline is often a good indicator of osmotic 8 adjustment and is historically associated with increased salt tolerance, proline 9 accumulation in sorghum reflects stress-response injury rather than acclimation. When 10 combining ion profiles with growth responses and stress tolerance indices, the variation 11 observed in tolerance was similarly not a sole result of Na + accumulation, but rather 12 reflected accession-specific mechanisms that may integrate these and other metabolic 13 responses. When we compared variation in tolerance to phylogenetic relationships, we 14 conclude that the most parsimonious explanation for the variation observed among 15 accessions is that salinity tolerance was acquired early during domestication and was 16 subsequently maintained or lost in diverged lineages during improvement in areas that 17 vary in soil salinity. 18 19 Key words: comparative analysis, environmental adaptation, potassium sodium 20 ratio, salinity stress, sorghum landraces, Sorghum bicolor, stress tolerance index 21 22 Abbreviations: 23 RDPB: relative decrease in plant biomass 24 ST: stress tolerance 25 STI: stress tolerance index 26 27 28 Tari I, Laskay G, Takacs Z, Poor P. 2013. Response of Sorghum to abiotic stresses: A review. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science 199: 264-274. Theerakulpisut P, Bunnag S, Kong-ngern K. 2005. Genetic diversity, salinity tolerance and physiological responses to NaCl of six rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars. Asian Journal of Plant Sciences.

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Evidence for Sorghum Domestication in Fourth Millennium BC Eastern Sudan: Spikelet Morphology from Ceramic Impressions of the Butana Group

Cited by 139 publications

References 25 publications

Genetic history of the African Sahelian populations

Genetic history of the African Sahelian populations

Comparative evolutionary analysis and prediction of deleterious mutation patterns between sorghum and maize

Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure inSorghumreveal diversity among domesticated landraces

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