Descripción del proyecto
Seguimiento de la propagación de los cultivos
El origen de la agricultura no es sencillo. Se han domesticado diversas plantas y animales en momentos diferentes. ¿Qué pasa con los melocotones, los pistachos, las manzanas o las nueces? El recorrido de muchos cultivos arbóreos sigue siendo enigmático, ya que los investigadores se centran principalmente en la dispersión y la domesticación de plantas y animales. El proyecto FEDD, financiado con fondos europeos, estudiará los orígenes y la propagación de muchas de las frutas más populares a escala mundial al contrastar datos lingüísticos, arqueológicos, históricos y de la historia del arte con los resultados de análisis de proteómica antigua, modelización genómica y arqueobotánica. Los hallazgos arrojarán luz sobre los cambios biológicos en las frutas y los cambios culturales entre sus cultivadores durante el proceso de domesticación.
Objetivo
Plant and animal domestication and dispersal is one of the most heavily debated topics in the social and biological sciences. However, a focus on the cereals has dramatically overshadowed other scholarship in the field, resulting in a shocking lack of scientific data relating to the origins of many crops. In contrast to annual crops, the domestication of long-generation perennials appears to have taken different biological trajectories and required significant cultural and ideological shifts. The FEDD project will study the origins and spread of many of the world’s most popular fruits by contrasting art historical, historical, archaeological, and linguistic data with the results from archaeobotanical, genomics modelling, and ancient proteomics analyses. My team will focus on the broad geographic region of Central Eurasia, where several of the most cultivated fruits in the world are thought to have originated. Furthermore, many other economically important fruits spread across Eurasia in antiquity along exchange routes colloquially called the Silk Road. Contrasting the results of these multidisciplinary studies will allow us to look at biological changes in the fruits and cultural changes among their cultivators during the domestication process. My unique ability to conduct this research rests in access to archaeobotanical material from collaborations with archaeological excavations (n=15) spanning the late Pleistocene to the medieval period and crossing seven different countries. The project represents an international endeavour, incorporating collaborators working in many of the least-studied areas of Eurasia, and will pull together team members interested in approaching plant domestication studies from different methodological perspectives. The FEDD project seeks to uncover the enigmatic journey of some of the most beloved items on our kitchen tables; from apples to peaches and pistachios to walnuts, we will explore the domestication and spread of arboreal crops.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsproteomics
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryancient history
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistorymedieval history
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturegrains and oilseedscereals
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
80539 Munchen
Alemania