Botanical context of domestication in South America

CURTI, R.; BERTERO, H D

Compendium of Plant Genomes: quinoa

Springer Verlag

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2021; p. 29 - 47

Scientific interest in quinoa has grown in the last decades associated to difussion of information about its seed nutritional properties which lead to increased consumption outside of the Andean region from where its originates and where consumption was restricted until the 80?s. A recent synthesis of current knowledge showed the state of the art about the crop covering several areas of current research . Most of it is focused on nutritional and physiological aspects, particularly those related to responses to stress. Studies related to the molecular and archaeological aspects of domestication have received less attention, partly because questions as when and where quinoa was domesticated are considered as anwered by many authors, who take as given that quinoa was domesticated once in the Central Andes from where it became distributed to the north and south of the region. Recent avaliable evidence shows a more complex picture, however. In this chapter we will show what is known about the genetic relations between quinoa and related species, its genetic structure and relationships with geographic origin, the antiquity of quinoa cultivation and the evolution of the domestication syndrome, what traits were affected (but not fixed) by domestication and recent hypotheses about where was quinoa domesticaded.