ABU DHABI // Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi have developed a map of genetic changes across the genome of date palms, giving clues to the origins of palm tree domestication.
They have also established genetic differences between Middle Eastern and North African date palms, an important discovery that sheds light on where they came from.
In a new paper published in Nature Communications, the team at the Centre for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYUAD identified more than 7 million mutations found between date palm varieties.
The study also offers two possible explanations for the crop’s origin.
One suggests that contemporary date palms descend from two distinct domestication events the first in the Middle East, and later in North Africa.
A second hypothesis proposes that date palms were first cultivated in the Middle East and later spread to North Africa, but somewhere along the way North African dates were crossed with a wild predecessor.
The research is part of the ‘100 Dates!’ genome sequencing project led by Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics Michael Purugganan.
“The data on diversity in the genomes helps us to identify genes that may help develop better date palms,” said Mr Purugganan, who is also a professor of biology. “It also tells us how date palms evolve, and provides clues as to where date palms came from.”
Evidence from archaeological digs suggest that the origin of domesticated dates is in the Gulf.
Seeds have been found on Dalma Island, Abu Dhabi that are more than 7,000 years old. Cultivated dates seem to appear about 3,000 years later in North Africa, according to excavation of ancient sites.
Khaled Hazzouri, senior research scientist at NYUAD, said that understanding the date palm will help researchers understand the story of domestication.
“It will help us understand the evolutionary process underlying domestication and the nature of the genetic changes underlying domestication,” he said.
The team also found that the date palm shares this genetic mutation with its very distant cousin, the oil palm, however they are separated by approximately, 60 million years of evolution.
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