Environment as a limiting factor of the historical global spread of mungbean
Journal
eLife
Journal Volume
12
Journal Issue
Article number e85725
Date Issued
2023-05-19
Author(s)
Ong, Pei-Wen
Lin, Ya-Ping
Chen, Hung-Wei
Lo, Cheng-Yu
Burlyaeva, Marina
Noble, Thomas
Nair, Ramakrishnan Madhavan
Schafleitner, Roland
Vishnyakova, Margarita
Bishop-von-Wettberg, Eric
Samsonova, Maria
Nuzhdin, Sergey
Abstract
While the domestication process has been investigated in many crops, the detailed route of cultivation range expansion and factors governing this process received relatively little attention. Here, using mungbean (Vigna radiata var. radiata) as a test case, we investigated the genomes of more than 1000 accessions to illustrate climatic adaptation's role in dictating the unique routes of cultivation range expansion. Despite the geographical proximity between South and Central Asia, genetic evidence suggests mungbean cultivation first spread from South Asia to Southeast, East and finally reached Central Asia. Combining evidence from demographic inference, climatic niche modeling, plant morphology, and records from ancient Chinese sources, we showed that the specific route was shaped by the unique combinations of climatic constraints and farmer practices across Asia, which imposed divergent selection favoring higher yield in the south but short-season and more drought-tolerant accessions in the north. Our results suggest that mungbean did not radiate from the domestication center as expected purely under human activity, but instead, the spread of mungbean cultivation is highly constrained by climatic adaptation, echoing the idea that human commensals are more difficult to spread through the south-north axis of continents.
Subjects
Vigna radiata; adaptation; climate; domestication; evolutionary biology; mungbean; plant biology; range expansion
Type
journal article