Abstract
Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) has had a central place in the livelihoods of people in the Americas since pre-Columbian times, notably for its edible fruits and multi-purpose wood. The botanical taxon includes both domesticated and wild varieties. Domesticated var gasipaes is believed to derive from one or more of the three wild types of var. chichagui identified today, although the exact dynamics and location of the domestication are still uncertain. Drawing on a combination of molecular and phenotypic diversity data, modeling of past climate suitability and existing literature, we present an integrated hypothesis about peach palm’s domestication. We support a single initial domestication event in south western Amazonia, giving rise to var. chichagui type 3, the putative incipient domesticate. We argue that subsequent dispersal by humans across western Amazonia, and possibly into Central America allowed for secondary domestication events through hybridization with resident wild populations, and differential human selection pressures, resulting in the diversity of present-day landraces. The high phenotypic diversity in the Ecuadorian and northern Peruvian Amazon suggest that human selection of different traits was particularly intense there. While acknowledging the need for further data collection, we believe that our results contribute new insights and tools to understand domestication and dispersal patterns of this important native staple, as well as to plan for its conservation.
Highlights
Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) is the only palm species with domesticated populations in the Neotropics [1]
We explore the possibility of a fourth hypothesis, being the conjunction of the second and third hypotheses mentioned above; we suggest a primary domestication event in southwestern Amazonia followed by secondary domestication at different sites of peach palm’s current distribution coinciding with the location of some of the currently described landraces
Our results suggest an overall tendency to higher levels of genetic diversity in South American, and western Amazonia, compared to Central American samples, corroborating the hypothesis of South America as being the region of the species’ earliest domestication [7,8,11,15,20,21,48]
Summary
Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) is the only palm species with domesticated populations in the Neotropics [1]. It is an alogamous, monoecious palm tree which adapts well to a broad range of ecological conditions, but prefers well-drained deep soils at altitudes below 800 m.a.s. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0144644. Peach palm is widely distributed across the neotropics; outside of commercial plantations, in homegardens and orchards, it is found from Honduras to Bolivia. The most recent revision of the Bactris genus [5] gathered all cultivated populations of peach palm into var. Gasipaes and all wild populations (previously identified as different species) into var. Several authors have argued that var. gasipaes may be derived from var. chichagui type 3, possibly through hybridization with type 1 [8,9,10,11] but with no definitive indication of when and where this hybridization, and subsequent domestication, may have taken place
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