Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture

Jardine, Phillip E.; Gosling, William D.; Lomax, Barry H.; Julier, Adele C. M.; Fraser, Wesley T.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-38-83-2019

Articles | Volume 38, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-38-83-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-38-83-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 38, issue 1

Research article

|

07 Jun 2019

Research article |

| 07 Jun 2019

Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture

Phillip E. Jardine, William D. Gosling, Barry H. Lomax, Adele C. M. Julier, and Wesley T. Fraser

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-38-83-2019-supplement

Data sets

Data and code for "Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture" Phillip E. Jardine, William D. Gosling, Barry H. Lomax, Adele C. M. Julier, Wesley T. Fraser https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8046395

Model code and software

Data and code for "Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture" Phillip E. Jardine, William D. Gosling, Barry H. Lomax, Adele C. M. Julier, Wesley T. Fraser https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8046395

Short summary

Many major food crops, including rice, wheat, maize, rye, barley, oats and millet, are domesticated species of grass. However, because grass pollen all looks highly similar, it has been challenging to track grass domestication using pollen in archaeological samples. Here, we show that we can use the chemical signature of pollen grains to classify different grass species. This approach has the potential to help unravel the spread of domestication and agriculture over the last 10 000 years.