The transition to agriculture, from hunter-gathering lifestyle, is one of the most important events in the last few thousand years of human history. Starting in different places and at different times across the continents, this process led to profound cultural and material changes, setting the foundation of modern societies. Plant domestication played a crucial role in the establishment of agricultural food production systems. Under this evolutionary process, species evolve dramatic functional and phenotypic changes under human selection for characters that fit the agricultural environment and human necessities (such as taste, yield, cultivation, harvesting and storage practices). Around 2500 plants have undergone domestication, grasses (e.g. wheat and rice) being the most important group by far.
Agriculture boosted demographic growth and long-distance migrations that greatly shaped the make up of human populations. New environments and lifestyles have resulted in important local adaptations in our specie, e.g. to pathogens, climate or dietary regimes. Likewise, following human movements, many domesticated plants dispersed and experienced local diversification (e.g. shapes, color, taste and usages) to adapt to new physical environments and human preferences.
Despite the connection between human Neolithic transitions and crop domestication, the genetic consequences of these processes are usually addressed separately in humans and plants. The main aim of this project is to jointly analyze the genetic structure of human populations and their domesticated crops to better understand how the common history of migration and expansion of humans and plants shaped the genetic make-up of each species. This project leverages the information on the species past history stored in the genomes, using population genetics approaches and complementary geographical, environmental and ethno-linguistic information. We focus on Africa, where agriculture transitions are still poorly characterized and show distinctive features from other continents, since plant cultivation started late, in multiple areas and spread more slowly and patchily than elsewhere.
