Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on October 18, 2007.

Genetics, Vol. 177, 1765-1776, November 2007, Copyright © 2007
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.079491

Molecular Phylogeography of Domesticated Barley Traces Expansion of Agriculture in the Old World

Daisuke Saisho^*, and Michael D. Purugganan^*,1

^* Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and Department of Biology, New York University, New York, New York 10003 and Research Institute for Bioresources, Okayama University, Kurashiki, 710-0046 Japan

¹ Corresponding author: Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and Department of Biology, 1009 Silver, 100 Washington Square E., New York University, New York, NY 10003.
E-mail: mp132{at}nyu.edu

Barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare) was first cultivated 10,500 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and is one of the founder crops of Eurasian agriculture. Phylogeographic analysis of five nuclear loci and morphological assessment of two traits in >250 domesticated barley accessions reveal that landraces found in South and East Asia are genetically distinct from those in Europe and North Africa. A Bayesian population structure assessment method indicates that barley accessions are subdivided into six clusters and that barley landraces from 10 different geographical regions of Eurasia and North Africa show distinct patterns of distribution across these clusters. Using haplotype frequency data, it appears that the Europe/North Africa landraces are most similar to the Near East population (F_ST = 0.15) as well as to wild barley (F_ST = 0.11) and are strongly differentiated from all other Asian populations (F_ST = 0.34–0.74). A neighbor-joining analysis using these F_ST estimates also supports a division between European, North African, and Near East barley types from more easterly Asian accessions. There is also differentiation in the presence of a naked caryopsis and spikelet row number between eastern and western barley accessions. The data support the differential migration of barley from two domestication events that led to the origin of barley—one in the Fertile Crescent and another farther east, possibly at the eastern edge of the Iranian Plateau—with European and North African barley largely originating from the former and much of Asian barley arising from the latter. This suggests that cultural diffusion or independent innovation is responsible for the expansion of agriculture to areas of South and East Asia during the Neolithic revolution.

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