MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN SQUASH (C. MAXIMA) DOMESTICATION THROUGH EXPERIMENTAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND ARCHAEOBOTANICAL APPROACHES

MARTÍNEZ, ANALÍA; LEMA VERÓNICA; CAPPARELLI AYLEN; BARTOLI CARLOS; LÓPEZ ANIDO, FERNANDO; PÉREZ, IVAN

París

Conferencia; 17th Conference of International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany; 2016

Muséum National DHistoire Naturelle

Plant domestication is a complex process in which natural and cultural factors play important roles delimiting evolutionary pathways of plants under cultivation. In order to deal and understand the changes generated during this process multi-disciplinary research groups are required providing different approaches, mostly when a full picture of a taxa domestication history is to be assessed.  In this presentation we expose advances in the study of C. maxima domestication through archaeobotanical, physiological and statistical analysis.  An experimental plant field was established and crosses conducted between domesticated (C. maxima ssp. maxima) and the spontaneous/wild form (C. maxima ssp. andreana), advancing F1 and F2 generations.  All the genotypes obtained were subjected to analysis. Physiological studies allowed us to characterize dormancy in all these genotypes setting the crucial role of the testa for the restoration of seed growth. Morphological and anatomical analyses of seeds, pericarps, peduncles and testas were conducted in order to reconstruct size and shape evolution under domestication and its linkage with physiological changes. All these analysis were then applied to archaeobotanical remains recovered from Southern Peru and North West Argentina archaeological sites ranging from 3000 BP up to the Spanish Conquest. Results suggest the presence of hybrid forms, mainly in the earlier sites, but also present in the latter ones. As it was expected, despite some trends, a linear evolutionary pathway was not found, diversity and multiple crossing seems to have been a constant through squash cultivation over time.