This book emerged from a series of lectures on crop evolution at the
Faculty of Agriculture of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While many
textbooks are available on general evolution, only a few deal with
evolution under domestication. This book is a modest attempt to bridge
this gap. It was written for advanced undergraduate and graduate
students in the fields of crop evolution, ethnobotany, plant breeding
and related subjects. Evolution under domestication is unique in the
general field of plant evolution for three main reasons: (a) it is
recent, having started not much more than 10 000 years ago with the
emergence of agri- culture; (b) the original plant material, i. e. the
wild progenitors of many important crop plants, still grow in their
natural habitats; (c) man played in this process. These factors enable a
more reliable a major role assessment of the impact of different
evolutionary forces such as hybridization, migration, selection and
drift under new circumstances. Interestingly, a great part of evolution
under domestication has been unconscious and a result of agricultural
practices which have created a new selection criteria, mostly against
characters favored by natural selec- tion. Introducing crop plants to
new territories exposed them to different ecological conditions
enhancing selection for new characters. Diversity in characters
associated with crop plants evolution is virtually absent in theit wild
progenitors and most of it has evolved under domestication.
