Unravelling the Origins of Pre-Columbian Agave Domestication in Present Day Arizona

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Botanical exploration over the last thirty years in Arizona has revealed at least six putative domesticated agaves still surviving in their archaeological context. These agaves share characteristics of relictual domesticated plants including clonality, reduced genetic diversity compared to wild agaves and reduced seed set or complete sexual sterility. Because of the importance of corn, beans and squash to the pre-Columbian peoples of this region it might be assumed that the agaves are also of Mesoamerican origin. In order to identify the ancestors of these domesticated plants we have undertaken traditional Sanger, and now Next-Gen, sequencing to infer the evolutionary relationships. Our phylogenetic data show that the domesticates are resolved in four distinct clades and only one, Agave murpheyi Gibson, has a sister relationship with Mesoamerican taxa, the other are in clades with local wild species or in the case of A. delamateri Hodgson & Slauson still unresolved. Expanded sampling of wild species and collaboration with archaeologist to pin-down the when and where these domesticated taxa originated is needed for a better understanding of this new secondary center of plant domestication.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Frontiers of Plant Domestication   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26264