On the Origin and Domestication History of Barley (Hordeum vulgare)
A. Badr,* K. Müller,† R. Schäfer-Pregl,† H. El Rabey,‡ S. Effgen,† H. H. Ibrahim,*
C. Pozzi,† W. Rohde,† and F. Salamini†
*Faculty of Science, Botany Department, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt; †Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung,
Cologne, Germany; and ‡Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Research Institute, Menoufiya University, Sadat City, Egypt
Remains of barley (Hordeum vulgare) grains found at archaeological sites in the Fertile Crescent indicate that about
10,000 years ago the crop was domesticated there from its wild relative Hordeum spontaneum. The domestication
history of barley is revisited based on the assumptions that DNA markers effectively measure genetic distances and
that wild populations are genetically different and they have not undergone significant change since domestication.
The monophyletic nature of barley domestication is demonstrated based on allelic frequencies at 400 AFLP polymorphic loci studied in 317 wild and 57 cultivated lines. The wild populations from Israel-Jordan are molecularly
more similar than are any others to the cultivated gene pool. The results provided support for the hypothesis that
the Israel-Jordan area is the region in which barley was brought into culture. Moreover, the diagnostic allele I of
the homeobox gene BKn-3, rarely but almost exclusively found in Israel H. spontaneum, is pervasive in western
landraces and modern cultivated varieties. In landraces from the Himalayas and India, the BKn-3 allele IIIa prevails,
indicating that an allelic substitution has taken place during the migration of barley from the Near East to South
Asia. Thus, the Himalayas can be considered a region of domesticated barley diversification.
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the founder
crops of Old World agriculture. Archaeological remains of
barley grains found at various sites in the Fertile Crescent
(Zohary and Hopf 1993; Diamond 1998) indicate that the
crop was domesticated about 8000 B.C. (B.C. 5 calibrated
dates and b.c. 5 uncalibrated dates, where calibration refers to normalization of radiocarbon age estimates based
on trees’ growth rings; Nesbitt and Samuel 1996). The
wild relative of the plant is known as Hordeum spontaneum C. Koch. In modern taxonomy, H. vulgare L. and
H. spontaneum C. Koch, as well as Hordeum agriocrithon
Åberg, are considered subspecies of H. vulgare (Bothmer
and Jacobsen 1985). For reasons given by Nevo (1992),
we will follow the traditional nomenclature, which considers separate taxa. Hordeum spontaneum and H. vulgare
are morphologically similar, with the cultivated form having broader leaves, shorter stem and awns, tough ear rachis, a shorter and thicker spike, and larger grains (Zohary
1969). The wild progenitor H. spontaneum is still colonizing its primary habitats in the Fertile Crescent from Israel
and Jordan to south Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, and southwestern Iran (Harlan and Zohary 1966; Nevo 1992). In the
same area, H. spontaneum also occupies an array of secondary habitats, such as open Mediterranean maquis, abandoned fields, and roadsides. Similar marginal habitats have
been more recently colonized by H. spontaneum in the
Aegean region, southeastern Iran, and central Asia, including Afghanistan and the Himalayan region (Zohary and
Hopf 1993). On the map given by Bothmer et al. (1995),
for example, H. spontaneum is reported in Greece, Egypt,
southwestern Asia, and eastward as far as southern Tajikistan and the Himalayas. Indeed, the Himalayas, Ethiopia,
and Morocco have occasionally been considered centers
Key words: barley domestication, Hordeum vulgare, Hordeum
spontaneum, Fertile Crescent, DNA markers.
Address for correspondence and reprints: F. Salamini, MaxPlanck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung, Carl-von-Linné-Weg 10, D50829 Köln, Germany. E-mail: salamini@mpiz-koeln.mpg.de.
Mol. Biol. Evol. 17(4):499–510. 2000
q 2000 by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. ISSN: 0737-4038
of barley domestication (Åberg 1938; Bekele 1983; Molina-Cano et al. 1987).
We revisited the domestication history of barley using the approach which proved successful in locating
the site of Einkorn wheat domestication (Heun et al.
1997). The method assumes that (1) DNA markers allow
a measure of genetic distances; (2) within a wild species,
geographical populations are genetically different; (3)
the localities in which wild accessions were collected
are known; and (4) the progenitors of crop plants have
not undergone significant genetic change during the past
10,000 years (Zohary and Hopf 1993). The last assumption can be verified by a careful morphological
analysis to exclude cases of introgression of cultivated
germplasm into wild accessions. Our ultimate goal was
to determine whether barley was domesticated more
than once and to pinpoint the region of barley
domestication.
Materials and Methods
Plant Materials
Three hundred sixty-seven H. spontaneum accessions
were obtained from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, Aleppo, Syria; the Australian Winter Cereals Collection, Tamworth, New South
Wales; the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Aberdeen, Idaho; the Institut für Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung, Gatersleben, Germany; the Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences, Svalöv; the Institut für Pflanzenbau
und Pflanzenzüchtung (FAL), Braunschweig, Germany;
and the Aegean Agricultural Research Institute, Izmir, Turkey. The accessions were grown at the Max-Planck-Institut
für Züchtungsforschung (MPIZ), Cologne, Germany. Wild
lines, together with a set of 20 cultivated genotypes, were
characterized with respect to 36 plant, ear, and seed characters. Ten of these were found to have superior capacity
to discriminate wild from cultivated lines: PH—plant
height (cm); LW—flag leaf width (cm); EL—length of the
spike (cm); EW—width of the spike (cm); GL—glume
length compared with kernel length (1 5 longer; 2 5
499
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Introduction
500
Badr et al.
bank at Braunschweig, Germany. Lines used in this
study are described on the Internet site http://www.mpizkoeln.mpg.de/salamini/salamini.html.
Genotype Fingerprinting
The AFLP procedure of Zabeau and Vos (1993)
was adopted. A total of seven primer combinations were
used to amplify EcoRI- and MseI-digested DNA. Autoradiographs were scored for presence versus absence
of amplified DNA fragments at a total of 400 positions
which were polymorphic in the genotypes considered.
FIG. 1.—Cross sections of seeds from a typical Hordeum spontaneum line and from Hordeum vulgare. The side grooves were scored
with 1 in a typical H. spontaneum line like that shown here, with 5
for H. vulgare and 2–4 for intermediate cases.
Figure 2A depicts the genomic structure of the
BKn-3 gene, along with regions sequenced and primers
used in PCR amplifications. The complete sequence of
the Ke allele (allele IIIb) of BKn-3 is reported in figure
3. The primers used for amplifying parts of the promoter
were p32 (AGC TTT GTT AAT GAA GCA GAA TCG)
and p33 (TTC GCC TTG GAC ATG AAT ATG), and
those used for amplifying parts of intron IV were p4199
(TGA AGA CGA TGA TTC ATG CCA GC) and p2312
(GAA ACT CGT GAT ATC TGT GTC C). PCR reactions were carried out according to standard protocols
using Taq DNA polymerase (1 U per reaction) and buffer (1MgSO4) and 20 pmol of each primer per reaction.
The annealing temperatures ranged from 568C to 618C,
and barley DNA concentrations varied from 50 to 200
ng per reaction.
PCR products of amplified BKn-3 regions were purified on Qiagen columns and sequenced using an
AB1377 DNA sequencer (Applied Biosystems). Sequences were compared with the aid of the PILEUP program in the GCG software package (Wisconsin Package,
version 9.0, Genetics Computer Group, Madison, Wis.).
PCR procedures were used to discriminate between
BKn-3 alleles based on the sizes of amplified products.
A nested PCR procedure was used to discriminate between wt (I, II, IIIa) and K (IIIb, IIIc) alleles based on
primers pA (TTC TTT GTG TGT GTT CTG GGG A),
pB (AGG TTT GAA CTT GGA CTC GCC), and pC
(GCT TTC CAA GGG AGT TCT GAC). The test revealed the presence, size, and position of the 305-bp
duplication in intron IV of BKn-3. Primers pA and pB
are located 59 and 39 of the 305-bp DNA element (fig.
2A). The 59 sequence of pC corresponds to the final 11
bp of the 305-bp element, while its 39 sequence is identical to the first 10 bp. Products of 649 and 335 bp were
expected for allele IIIc (fig. 2B). For allele IIIa, a single
fragment of 344 bp was amplified. Allele II has a 2-bp
insertion, leading to the amplification of a 346-bp fragment. Primers p32 and p33 allowed the identification of
lines with allele I. The PCR amplification products derived from this allele were 422 bp long; all other alleles
gave rise to products of 441 bp (fig. 2C). The primers
p32 and pCA (CGC TCC GTT GCA GTT GG) differentiate allele II from alleles I and IIIa. No amplification
product is expected for alleles IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc, while
alleles I and II generated PCR fragments of 346 and 327
bp, respectively (fig. 2D).
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equal; 3 5 shorter); AL—awn length (cm); NR—number
of ear rows (1 5 two; 2 5 six); RF—fragility of ear rachis
(1 5 tough; 2 5 fragile); SA—endosperm width (mm);
and SB—depth of the lateral seed grooves (1 5 spontaneum type as in fig. 1; 5 5 vulgare type; 2–4 5 intermediate). The last two characters were evaluated by computer scanning on median sections of seeds. Traits SA and
SB were recorded for all 57 H. vulgare accessions included in group 14 of table 1. These were selected as representative of the genetic variability present in the cultivated
gene pool. A discrimination index capable of correctly assigning the accessions to H. spontaneum or H. vulgare taxa
was developed to be equal to LW 1 EW 1 GL 1 NR 1
SA 1 SB/2 2 (PH/100 1 EL/10 1 RF). As in multivariate analysis, the index combines nine characters that,
when used alone, already possess relevant discriminating
capacities.
The Hooded (K) barley mutant phenotype is characterized by the formation of an ectopic flower at the
lemma-awn interface, and it has been shown to be
caused by a mutation in the Bkn-3 gene, which belongs
to the Knotted-1-like-homeobox (Knox) gene class
(Müller et al. 1995).
The study of the geographic distribution of Bkn-3
alleles was based on 304 of the 317 wild accessions
analyzed by AFLP fingerprinting and placed at least to
a country. In addition, 5 accessions collected from natural stands in the Himalayan region corresponding to
the wild barley H. agriocrithon were analyzed, along
with an additional 11 H. spontaneum lines, all from Israel. The H. vulgare lines included the 57 mentioned
above, to which another 17 were added. Of these 74
lines, 21 were landraces from the Himalayan-Indian region, 24 were landraces and old varieties from Mediterranean, Balkan, and African locations—including a few
from central Asia—and 29 were modern Western varieties. Thirty-five Hooded genotypes were examined (two
Ke [Elevated Hood]). The strains BGS152 (K) and
BGS153 (Ke) were obtained from the Barley Genetics
Cooperative, Tucson, Ariz. The strain K-Atlas was obtained from L. Stebbins, University of California at Davis. Other K and Ke lines were selected from the collection of 5,842 barley accessions available in the gene
DNA Sequencing and PCR Analyses
Table 1
Mean Values of Morphological Characters Measured for Wild (Hordeum spontaneum) and Cultivated (Hordeum vulgare) Accessions of Barley
Location
Abbreviation
Na
PHb
LWc
ELd
EWe
GLf
ALg
NRh
SAi
SBj
RFk
Indexl
Minm
Maxm
Israel-Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Israel, unknown location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lebanon–western Syria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Turkey near Gaza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Turkey near Diyarbakir and northern Syria. . . . . .
Northern Iraq and western Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Iraq, unknown location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Southwestern Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Iran, unknown location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mediterranean and north Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Himalayas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unknown location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cultivated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I-J
I-u
L-WS
T-G
T-NS
Iq-In
Iq-u
In
In-u
Me
Asia
Him
UK
Cult
104
28
12
31
12
22
11
26
27
9
23
4
8
57
1.18
1.20
1.19
1.22
1.21
1.16
1.10
1.13
1.15
1.06
1.16
0.97
1.18
1.10
1.31
1.35
1.03
1.15
1.23
1.24
1.17
1.28
1.28
1.04
1.20
1.78
1.16
1.60
1.05
1.03
1.10
1.14
1.07
0.98
0.93
1.00
1.02
0.89
0.98
1.08
1.08
0.93
0.60
0.60
0.62
0.57
0.61
0.64
0.68
0.58
0.60
0.66
0.56
0.60
0.60
1.02
0.47
0.43
0.44
0.43
0.44
0.43
0.45
0.43
0.41
0.50
0.40
0.33
0.44
0.33
1.63
1.67
1.54
1.58
1.70
1.43
1.45
1.31
1.18
1.11
1.27
0.15
1.45
1.42
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1.7
0.91
0.95
0.88
0.85
0.80
0.92
0.82
0.86
0.91
0.97
0.89
0.91
0.84
1.16
0.79
0.82
0.83
1.20
0.90
1.10
1.27
0.93
0.99
0.97
1.02
0.69
0.72
2.25
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
0.86
0.92
0.52
0.85
0.69
1.19
1.37
0.95
1.02
1.06
0.93
1.25
0.50
5.30
20.13
0.14
20.21
20.42
20.06
0.46
0.60
0.14
20.04
0.51
0.08
1.10
0.09
3.95
1.94
2.00
1.60
1.88
1.72
1.98
1.85
1.87
2.01
1.41
2.00
1.47
1.18
6.13
a
Number of lines measured.
Plant height (cm 3 1022).
c Flag leaf width (cm).
d Spike length (cm 3 1021).
e Spike width (cm).
f Glume length compared with kernel length (1 5 longer; 2 5 equal; 3 5 shorter).
g Awn length (cm 3 1021).
h Number of ear rows (2 5 six rows; 1 5 two rows).
i Endosperm width (mm) (see fig. 1).
j Depth of endosperm grooves (3 0.5) (see fig. 1).
k Fragility of the rachis (1 5 tough rachis; 2 5 fragile rachis).
l The index is defined in Materials and Methods.
m Min and Max indicate the range of variability of the index.
b
Barley Domestication
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Badr et al.
Methods for Phylogenetic Analysis
Molecular fingerprinting generated a database listing the presence or absence of an amplified fragment at
each of 400 AFLP loci. The results were used to calculate genetic distances between lines. When groups of
lines were compared, frequencies of AFLP bands within
each group were used. Genetic distance algorithms used
were DICE (Dice 1945), Roger-W (Wright 1978),
NEI72 (Nei 1972), the average taxonomic distance
DIST, and the Euclidean distance (as in Rohlf 1982).
Trees were constructed by neighbor-joining (NJ; Saitou
and Nei 1987), FITCH (Fitch and Margoliash 1967),
restricted maximum-likelihood (REML; Felsenstein
1981) and unweighted–pair group (UPGMA; Sokal and
Michener 1958) methods. All phylogenetic trees, as well
as the consensus tree summarizing the relative group
positions in 10 different phylogenetic trees (Margush
and McMorris 1981), were computed with the PHYLIP
program (Felsenstein 1989). The relationship of single
H. spontaneum line to a consensus H. vulgare molecular
idiotype was assessed based on AFLP data by calculating the genetic distance DICE (Dice 1945). With DICE,
depending on whether fragment alleles exist (1) or not
(2) at AFLP loci, two genotypes will be considered similar (11 5 a; 22 5 d) or different (12 or 21 5 b
and c, respectively). The algorithm for genetic similarity
is DICE 5 2a/2a 1 b 1 c; that is, the component d is
excluded as a case of similarity, while a double weight
is assigned to a. The consensus idiotype of H. vulgare
was based on scoring within the H. vulgare group of 57
lines, with band frequencies of less than 0.5 scored as
0 and all other frequencies scored as 1.
Results
Morphological Attributes of H. spontaneum
Lines of H. spontaneum that have been introgressed
by cultivated germplasm—i.e., feral forms—will appear to
be more closely related than others to the H. vulgare gene
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FIG. 2.—A, Genomic structure of the BKn-3 gene with regions sequenced and primers used in this study. Open boxes represent the six
exons of the gene. Translational start and stop codons are depicted. Triangles mark major DNA insertion polymorphisms characteristic for certain
alleles of BKn-3 (see also fig. 3 and table 2). The 305-bp duplication and the locations of the primers used in the PCR experiment are also
indicated. B, Nested PCR analysis using primers pA, pB, and pC. The DNAs were from six K (allele IIIc) lines and one wt line. The sizes of
the PCR products were 649 and 335 bp for the six K lines and 344 bp for the wt line (this line has a type IIIa allele of BKn-3; see also table
2). C, Results of a PCR experiment carried out with primers p32 and p33. The test was designed to individuate allele I within the Hordeum
spontaneum accessions. Hordeum spontaneum accession IPK 9823 has allele II. The sizes of the PCR products were 422 bp for allele I and
441 bp for the other alleles. D, Results of a PCR experiment based on primers p32 and pCA. Hordeum spontaneum accessions U253933 and
U2219796 have the 20-bp promoter insertion in BKn-3 (see table 2; they have identical amplification patterns in C). The pCA primer allows
the amplification of only allele I (327 bp) and allele II (346 bp).
Barley Domestication
503
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FIG. 3.—Sequence of the BKn-3 Ke allele in the regions indicated by A, B, and C in figure 2A. Major structural polymorphisms between
Ke and other alleles of BKn-3 are underlined. Differences among alleles are detailed in table 2. The sequence is deposited at EMBL under
accession number X83518.
pool when analyzed molecularly and will thus be erroneously considered as putative progenitors of cultivated barley. To avoid this possibility, a careful morphological analysis is necessary. In this study, 50 of the 367 wild accessions were discarded based on the scoring of the morphological traits described in table 1. Of those remaining, 207
were collected from primary habitats at known (within 10
km) sampling points. These locations were in Israel and
Jordan (group 1 in table 1; also included were four lines
collected in southwestern Syria near the border with Jordan), in Lebanon and western Syria (group 3), in the vicinity of Gaza in Turkey (group 4), in the region of Di-
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Badr et al.
Cultivated Barley is of Monophyletic Origin
Castiglioni et al. (1998) selected from a collection of
5842 accessions 67 H. vulgare lines characterized by large
differences in ear, grain, and plant characters and in geographic area of cultivation. The lines were either landraces
or old cultivated varieties. Of those lines, 57 were considered in this study. They were cultivated in the Himalayan
region (3), in India, Yemen, and Pakistan (5), in Afghanistan, Turkestan, and central Asia (6), in the Mediterranean
area (7), in Ethiopia and central Africa (8), in the Balkans
(4), in southern Europe (4), in central Europe (8), in northern Europe (5), and in America and Australia (7). The
AFLP fingerprinting data for the 57 cultivated lines and
the 317 wild accessions were subjected to phylogenetic
analyses using different procedures. One tree is reported
in figure 4A; the 57 cultivated genotypes (red) cluster together, excluding all of the 317 wild accessions (blue). All
other trees based on different algorithms gave similar results. This finding allows us to consider the cultivated gene
pool as a single taxonomic entity.
Relationships Between Wild and Cultivated Gene Pools
The relationships between groups of wild barley and
the cultivated gene pool were assessed based on AFLP
allele frequencies calculated for each group of lines. The
phylogenetic tree in figure 4B illustrates the position of the
cultivated gene pool with respect to six groups of wild
lines sampled from precisely known locations within the
Fertile Crescent. The wild accessions that are most closely
related, as a group, to H. vulgare were sampled in Israel
and Jordan. The genetic distances between cultivated and
wild groups increase from the southern parts to the northern Fertile Crescent. The lines sampled in southern Iran
were, in fact, also closer to cultivated genotypes than were
the lines sampled in more northerly locations. Figure 4C
shows the result of a similar analysis considering three
additional groups of lines also sampled in the Fertile Crescent. Two groups of lines from the Israel and Jordan
area—one group sampled at precisely known locations and
the second from less well defined areas—map together,
both showing the closest relationship with the H. vulgare
gene pool. The two Iranian groups also map together, as
do the two from Iraq. In figure 4D, wild H. spontaneum
lines from secondary habitats were added to the analysis
of figure 4B. Lines sampled in Himalayan and Mediterranean locations appeared to be closely related to H. vulgare, while wild lines from central Asia were genetically
closer to H. spontaneum genotypes from the eastern part
of the Fertile Crescent. The consensus tree in figure 4E
indicates that the relationships described in figure 4B–D
remained almost unchanged when studied with different
methods.
A further analysis aimed to localize, within the IsraelJordan area, sites at which the wild lines are more closely
related to the cultivated gene pool. First, the genetic distance between H. vulgare and each of the 317 lines of H.
spontaneum was calculated based on the genetic distance
DICE (Dice 1945). In this process, the AFLP data for each
line were used and compared with a consensus molecular
idiotype of H. vulgare. Genetic distances varied between
0.219 and 0.608. An arbitrary group of 45 wild H. spontaneum accessions that appeared to be more closely related
to cultivated barley (distance values of between 0.219 and
0.300) was selected. These included, as expected (see Discussion), 9 lines sampled from secondary habitats—4 in
the Himalayan region and 5 in Mediterranean locations (1
in Cyrenaica and 4 in Cyprus)—and 34 accessions from
the Fertile Crescent. Of the latter, 2 were from TurkeyNorthern Syria, 5 were from Iran and 1 was from an unknown sampling point. Of the remaining 26 wild H. spontaneum genotypes from Israel-Jordan, 20 were collected
from the sites reported in figure 5A. These 20 lines did
not originate from a single geographical area; they belong
to loose southern (around 338409N, 358159W) and northern
(around 318459N, 358W) clusters.
The relationships between the accessions of the two
Israel-Jordan clusters, the five Iranian lines, and the
groups of lines sampled in secondary habitats of the
Mediterranean and Himalayan regions were also studied
with a phylogenetic analysis carried out with AFLP data
from single accessions (fig. 4F). The tree obtained
shows (1) that the Iranian and Israeli lines belong to two
separate wild gene pools; (2) that the northern and
southern Israeli clusters tend to remain separate in this
analysis; and (3) that the lines from secondary habitats
in the Mediterranean are related to the Israeli lines,
while the Himalayan accessions are genetically related
to the Iranian group of wild lines.
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yarbakir in Turkey and in northern Syria (group 5), in
northern Iraq and western Iran (group 6), and in southwestern Iran (group 8). For an additional 66 wild accessions from the Fertile Crescent, only the country of sampling was known (Israel [group 2], Iraq [group 7], or Iran
[group 9]). Hordeum spontaneum lines from secondary
habitats were included in the groups of Mediterranean and
North African origin (group 10) and those from Central
Asia (group 11) and the Himalayas (group 12). Group 13
consisted of eight wild accessions of unknown origin.
Group 14 contained the 57 cultivated lines of H. vulgare.
Table 1 presents the morphological characterization
of the 14 groups of lines considered. Compared with the
wild forms, the plants of the cultivated lines were shorter (PH/100), they had larger flag leaves (LW) and ear
widths (EW) and shorter glumes (GL), their ears frequently formed six rows (NR), their seeds were broader
(SA), and their endosperm grooves were less pronounced (SB/2). The discrimination index had a mean
value of 5.30 for the sample of cultivated lines and varied between 20.42 and 1.10 in the 13 groups of wild
accessions. Among single wild accessions, the index
reached a maximum value of 2.01, while for the group
of 20 H. vulgare control lines the minimum value was
3.95. It was concluded that the 317 H. spontaneum accessions selected for molecular fingerprinting did not
show evident signs of genetic introgression from H. vulgare. The only exceptions were the four H. spontaneum
lines sampled from natural stands in the Himalayan region (group 12): although most of their morphological
traits fell within the range of those typical for wild
groups, they had ears that virtually lacked awns.
Barley Domestication
505
The Himalayan Region as a Center of Cultivated Barley This excludes the possibility that the regions mentioned
Diversification
were centers of domestication, although they may have
The AFLP data indicate the Israel-Jordan area as a been centers of diversification of cultivated barley. This
possible site of barley domestication (see Discussion). is particularly true for the Himalayan region, where not
In our AFLP experiments, cultivated landraces were in- only local landraces, but also two- and six-rowed wild
cluded from other putative centers of barley domesti- forms (H. spontaneum and H. agriochriton, respectivecation, such as the Himalayas, Ethiopia, and Morocco. ly) have been sampled.
Müller et al. (1995) reported that the barley mutant
These genotypes unequivocally had a common monophyletic origin with the other cultivated lines analyzed. Hooded (K), a cultivated form introduced to Western
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FIG. 4.—A, Unrooted polygenetic tree reporting AFLP-based genetic relationships among 317 Hordeum spontaneum accessions (blue) and 57
cultivated lines of Hordeum vulgare (red). The DICE genetic distances as computed by SAS (SAS Institute Inc. 1989) served as the input for
the neighbor-joining tree-building method implemented in the PHYLIP package (see Materials and Methods). B–D, Unrooted phylogenetic trees
derived from AFLP band frequencies in groups of wild and cultivated barley accessions. Groups of wild lines considered in B were from six
primary habitats in the Fertile Crescent, those in C were from nine primary habitats, and those in D were from six primary and three secondary
habitats. Tree building was based on the neighbor-joining method and NEI72 genetic distances. Hordeum spontaneum lines sampled from known
locations in the Fertile Crescent are included in groups I-J (from Israel and Jordan; 104 lines), L-WS (Lebanon and western Syria; 12 lines), TG (Turkey around Gaza; 31 lines), T-NS (Turkey around Diyarbakir and northern Syria; 12 lines), Iq-In (northern Iraq and western Iran; 22
lines), and In (southwestern Iran; 26 lines). Groups I-u (28 lines), Iq-u (11), and In-u (27) include H. spontaneum genotypes sampled in unknown
locations in Israel, Iraq, and Iran, respectively. Groups Me (9 lines), Asia (23 lines), and Him (4 lines) consist of H. spontaneum accessions
sampled in secondary habitats located in the Mediterranean–north Africa region, the Himalayas and central Asia, respectively. Group Cult
includes 57 lines of H. vulgare. E, Consensus tree summarizing the relative positions of accession groups in 10 different phylogenetic trees
constructed by various combinations of tree-building methods and genetic-distance algorithms. AFLP band frequencies were used as the basis
for tree building. A number at a fork is the number of times that the assemblage consisting of the groups to the right of that fork occurred
among the 10 trees considered. F, Unrooted tree based on AFLP data, showing the phylogenetic relationships between lines selected from among
the 45 H. spontaneum accessions that were more closely related to H. vulgare. Twenty lines were from known locations in Israel-Jordan (group
1: green, north cluster; brown, South cluster). The yellow lines (group 9) were from Iran. The group 10 lines were from Cyprus (Me; brown).
Line 10-313 (uncolored) was from Cyrenaica. The four lines of group 12 (Him; yellow) were from the Himalayan region.
506
Badr et al.
countries about 200 years ago from the Himalayan region (Harlan 1931), has a mutation in the homeobox
gene BKn-3. Three alleles of the gene were characterized molecularly at the time: wt, K, and Ke. The K allele
has a 305-bp duplication in intron IV (region C in fig.
2A). The allele Ke has a 33-bp insertion at positions
427–460 in intron IV (region B in fig. 2A), as well as
the duplication of 305 bp. We used the BKn-3 alleles as
diagnostic markers to follow the flow of germplasm
from wild to cultivated lines. The molecular analysis
was also extended to a part of the BKn-3 promoter (region A, positions 1–380 in fig. 2A).
Regions A, B, and C were sequenced for 12 cultivated barley lines (8 modern Western varieties and 4
lines from the Himalayan region), for 2 H. spontaneum
accessions, for a single H. agriocrithon accession from
the Himalayas, for 18 K lines, and for 2 Ke lines. The
three known BKn-3 alleles were detected, as were two
new ones (table 2). The two Ke lines had allele IIIb,
with the 305-bp duplication in region C. BKn-3 alleles
Table 2
Polymorphisms Observed Between Bkn-3 Alleles from Various Sources
INSERTIONS
IN
PROMOTER
INSERTIONS
Position No.
in Region Ab
DNA SOURCEa
74
Hordeum spontaneum
line 369 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hordeum vulgare Europe . . . . . .
H. vulgare Carina . . . . . . . . . . . .
H. spontaneum line 382 . . . . . . .
H. vulgare Himalayas . . . . . . . . .
H. vulgare Ke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
H. vulgare K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T
T
2
2
2
2
2
a
127 163e 295
300
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
C
C
C
T
T
T
T
C
C
T
T
T
T
T
C
C
T
T
T
T
T
IN INTRON
IV
Position No.
in Region Bc
427f 460
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
G
G
G
G
G
G
C
581
710
859
866
868
G
G
2
G
G
G
G
A
A
A
G
G
G
G
G
G
T
T
T
T
T
C
C
T
C
C
C
C
G
G
C
G
G
G
G
Description and origin of H. spontaneum lines available from http://www.mpiz-koeln.mpg/salamini/salamini.html.
Corresponds to positions 1–380 in figure 3.
Corresponds to positions 381–832 in figure 3.
d Corresponds to positions 883–1783 in figure 3.
e Indicates presence (1) or absence (2) of a 33-bp insertion at positions 427–459.
f Indicates presence (1) or absence (2) of a 20-bp insertion at positions 163–182.
g Indicates presence (1) or absence (2) of a 2-bp insertion (TC) at positions 1097–1098.
h Indicates presence (1) or absence (2) of a 305-bp insertion at positions 1140–1444.
b
c
OF
BKN-3
Position No.
in Region Cd
921 1097g 1140h 1642
C
C
T
T
T
T
T
2
2
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
T
T
C
C
C
C
C
ALLELE
TYPE
I
I
II
IIIa
IIIa
IIIb
IIIc
Downloaded from http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on August 11, 2015
FIG. 5.—A, Sampling sites of 104 Hordeum spontaneum lines collected in Israel and Jordan and near the Jordan-Syria border. Asterisks
indicate lines with genetic distances to the cultivated gene pool between 0.219 and 0.300 DICE units (see Materials and Methods). Red dots
indicate sites of collection of H. spontaneum lines with BKn-3 allele I. B, Flow of alleles of the BKn-3 gene from wild H. spontaneum populations
to cultivated germplasm. The borders of primary habitats of H. spontaneum (according to Harlan and Zohary 1966) are represented by the
dotted red line and correspond to the Fertile Crescent.
Barley Domestication
507
Table 3
Frequency of Bkn-3 Alleles in 320 Lines of Hordeum spontaneum Collected in Primary
and Secondary Habitats of the Species and in 109 Cultivated Hordeum vulgare Strains
FREQUENCY
OF
BKN-3 ALLELESc
Nb
I
II
IIIa
IIIb
IIIc
Wild primary habitats
I-J 1 Iu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
L-WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T-G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T-NS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Iq-In 1 Iq-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In 1 In-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
143
12
28
12
33
51
4.2
0
3.5
0
0
0
74.2
75.0
71.5
66.7
33.3
45.1
21.6
25.0
25.0
33.3
66.7
54.9
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Wild secondary habitats
Me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Him . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
23
9
0
0
0
66.7
34.8
22.2
33.3
65.2
77.8
0
0
0
0
0
0
Cultivated
Western landraces . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Modern varieties . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Himalayan-Indian landraces . . . . .
Ke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
K...........................
24
29
21
2
33
83.3
82.8
19.0
0
0
16.7
10.3
14.3
0
0
0
6.9
66.7
0
0
0
0
0
100
0
0
0
0
0
100
a
Group abbreviations as in table 1.
Number of lines tested.
c Expressed as a proportion of all alleles found.
b
from K genotypes were similar to the Ke allele but with
a deletion of 33 bp in region B (allele IIIc). A line of
H. spontaneum and one H. agriocrithon accession from
the Himalayan region had allele IIIa. The cultivated Himalayan landraces also had BKn-3 allele IIIa, which can
thus be considered the progenitor sequence of Ke and K,
from which it differs by the absence of the 305-bp duplication. A line of H. spontaneum from Israel had the
same allele as the European barley varieties. This allele
(allele I) has a deletion of 20 bp at positions 163–182
in region A of the Ke sequence and other differences
scattered along its DNA sequence. Allele II was found
first in the European H. vulgare variety Carina. Its sequence is devoid of the 305-bp duplication and different
in several respects from alleles I, IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc (table 2).
Allelic assignment to 320 wild (H. spontaneum and
H. agriocrithon) and 109 cultivated Hordeum genotypes—originating from several countries or geographical areas—was completed based on the PCR amplifications described in Materials and Methods. All wt genotypes had alleles that lacked the 305-bp duplication.
Ke and K lines had, as expected, alleles IIIb and IIIc,
respectively. In all of the Hooded lines considered, the
305-bp duplication starts and ends at the same positions.
Other PCR amplifications discriminated between wt genotypes that carried alleles I, II, and IIIa.
Table 3 and figure 5B summarize all PCR data concerning BKn-3 allele assignment. In the wild species,
the prevailing alleles were II and IIIa. The frequencies
of these alleles varied from east to west and from north
to south: allele IIIa prevailed in the northeastern part of
the Fertile Crescent, while II dominated in southwestern
locations. Allele I was rare in wild species and present
only in H. spontaneum. The seven instances found were
in lines from Israel (6) and Turkey (1). Of the six IsraeliJordan lines, four were sampled at precise locations (fig.
5A).
Among cultivated lines, allele IIIa largely prevailed
in the Himalayan region, while allele I was largely dominant among landraces from Europe, Africa, and western
Asia. It also prevailed in modern H. vulgare cultivars.
In these cultivars, the finding of BKn-3 alleles different
from I is easily explained by the use of H. spontaneum
in barley breeding as a donor of disease resistance genes
(Nevo 1992). Allele IIIb was characteristic for the Ke
strains, and IIIc was typical for the K genotypes. In summary, allele I, found almost exclusively (but rarely) in
the Israel-Jordan region, characterized the wild progenitor which generated, monophyletically, the cultivated
Western gene pool of today. In the cultivated barleys of
the Himalayas, allele I was replaced by allele IIIa. Allele
IIIa in the Himalayan region gave rise to the mutant
forms corresponding to genotypes Ke and K.
Discussion
Figure 4A closes the long-lasting debate on the origin of barley: landraces from Ethiopia, Mediterranean
regions, and the Himalayas form a single taxonomic entity with other cultivated lines. This entity branches off
at a precise and unique point from a phylogenetic tree
of 317 wild lines. The possible origin of cultivated Moroccan (Molina-Cano et al. 1987) and Ethiopian (Bekele
1983) forms from H. spontaneum had already been rendered less likely by the finding that Moroccan wild populations of H. spontaneum are of hybrid origin (Giles
and Leftkovitch 1984, 1985) and, for Ethiopia, by the
possible mutational origin of the flavonoid variants
found there (Fröst, Holm, and Asker 1975). The Hi-
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GERMPLASM AND GROUPSa
508
Badr et al.
a strong tendency to behave as weeds. Helbaek (1959)
wrote, ‘‘I never saw a field of any crop in Kurdistan in
which wild barley was not to be found growing as a
weed.’’ Thus, the possibility that molecular markers
from the cultivated gene pool were introgressed, via natural crosses, into H. spontaneum populations is very
real.
Indeed, based on morphological analyses, 50 wild
lines were discarded from our sample because they
showed signs of introgression by H. vulgare. Of the remaining 317, two groups of lines, sampled in secondary
habitats in Mediterranean countries and in the Himalayas, were closely related molecularly to the cultivated
gene pool (fig. 4C). However, the locations at which
these lines were collected must be excluded as sites of
barley domestication for the following reasons: (1) The
Himalayan lines reveal a hybrid origin with respect to
at least one character—awn length. (2) Some of the Aegean accessions can be considered feral forms or even
wild barleys which may have, in the sixth and fifth millennia b.c. (Zohary and Hopf 1993), followed the migration of cultivated landraces of cereals during their
spread from the Near East to the Aegean region. Being
present as weeds in cultivated fields, they may have exchanged genetic materials with H. vulgare. (3) As
shown by archeological data, two-rowed forms of H.
spontaneum with brittle rachises, apparently collected
from the wild (Zohary and Hopf 1993), were already
being harvested by humans in the Fertile Crescent prior
to the appearance of agriculture. Such forms have been
found at Ohalo II (Sea of Galilee; 17000 b.c.), Tell Abu
Hureyra (North Syria; 9000 b.c.), Mureybit (North Syria; 8000 b.c.), and Tell Aswad (east of Damascus; 7800
b.c.). (4) Unmistakable remains of nonbrittle barley, i.e.,
cultivated forms, date from Tell Abu Ureyra (7500 b.c.;
Hillman 1975), Tell Aswad (6900 b.c.; van Zeist and
Bakker-Heeres 1985) and Jarmo, Iraq (7000 b.c.; Helbaek 1959). All of these sites, like those at which sixrow cultivated types have been discovered (Tell Abu
Hureyra, Ali Kosh, Tell-es-Sawwan, Catal Hüyük, Hacilar; Zohary and Hopf 1993), are in the Fertile Crescent. The archeological data allow us to conclude that
the Fertile Crescent is the place of origin of cultivated
barley, as indicated by the fixation of nonbrittle mutations and, subsequently, by the emergence of the sixrowed, hulled, and naked types. But the question remains: where exactly in this area did domestication take
place?
The data provided here direct us to the southern
parts of the Fertile Crescent, specifically to the IsraelJordan area; BKn-3 allele I, typical of the cultivated
Western landraces, was found in only seven H. spontaneum lines, and six of these were sampled in Israel, four
at known locations. In the Israel-Jordan area, moreover,
the frequencies of molecular alleles at 400 AFLP loci
are most similar to those of the cultivated gene pool.
The analysis of the 45 wild lines that are more tightly
related to H. vulgare based on AFLP frequencies shows
that 26 were sampled in the Israel-Jordan area. However,
in contrast to the case for einkorn wheat (Heun et al.
1997), they do not originate from a single restricted geo-
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malayan region, in contrast, has stimulated much more
discussion (e.g., Zohary 1959; Staudt 1961).
The finding of wild forms with six-rowed ears and
brittle rachises (H. agriocrithon) in wild stands (Åberg
1940) was previously viewed as support for the hypothesis that this region was a barley domestication center.
This hypothesis was later rejected because the six-row
strains were explained as feral forms contaminating cereal varieties (Zohary 1959; Staudt 1961; Takahashi
1964). More recent data, however, indicate that true wild
H. spontaneum is present in Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (Yang and Yen 1985; Shao 1987;
Corke and Atsmon 1990). These new findings were the
basis for Xu (1987) to conclude that the six-row naked
forms of cultivated Chinese barleys may derive from
genotypes domesticated in Tibet, starting from a wild
species. Our study indicates that the BKn-3 alleles IIIb
and IIIc, which were already present in cultivated landraces at the time of their discovery (Harlan 1931), originated from the wt allele IIIa. This allele differs in several parts of its sequence (table 2) from those present in
Western H. vulgare varieties, while it is predominant in
the cultivated landraces in the Himalayas. These data
forced us to reconsider the Himalayas as a possible center of barley domestication.
The AFLP data now strongly support the monophyletic domestication of barley. A solution to the apparent discrepancy between the two sets of data is provided by the diffusion of BKn-3 allele IIIa in H. spontaneum populations. This allele is, in fact, predominant
in the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent and in related
secondary habitats of the wild species. Apparently, during its migration from the western Fertile Crescent to
central Asia, cultivated barley was introgressed by wild
Eastern germplasm, generating the cultivated—frequently naked—varieties of Tibet and surrounding countries.
A second product of these hybridizations was, most
probably, the appearance in Himalayan wild stands of
H. agriochriton, a feral form of clear hybrid origin (Zohary 1969). Very many data support the occurrence of
natural crosses between wild and cultivated Hordeum
taxa (Zohary 1960; Kobyljanskij 1967; Kamm 1977;
Brown et al. 1978; Allard 1988).
A second aim of this study was to pinpoint the site
at which barley may have been domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, according to the procedure successfully
used for einkorn (Heun et al. 1997). This method makes
use of AFLPs, markers which have been shown to be
useful in the evaluation of the genetic variability present
in wild and cultivated barleys (Pakniyet et al. 1997;
Schut, Qi, and Stam 1997; Castiglioni et al. 1998). The
assumption that genetic diversity exists in the gene pool
of H. spontaneum and that it is at least in part dependent
on the geographic origins of the wild populations considered has also been demonstrated (Nevo et al. 1979,
1986a, 1986b; Snow and Brody 1984; Jana et al. 1987;
Chalmers et al. 1992; Dawson et al. 1993). The assignment of a wild state to all the collected accessions of
H. spontaneum proved to be more difficult. Unlike einkorn, barley has a long history of cultivation in the Fertile Crescent. Some races of wild barley, moreover, have
Barley Domestication
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grant 0311378 of the
German Ministry of Science and Technology (BMBF).
We thank M. Pasemann for assistance with the
manuscript.
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