Parallel seed color adaptation during multiple domestication attempts of an ancient new world grain

Abstract

Out of the almost 2,000 plants that have been selected as crops, only few are fully domesticated, and many intermediates between wild plants and domesticates exist. Genetic constraints might be the reason why incompletely domesticated plants have few characteristic crop traits, and retained numerous wild plant features. Here, we investigate the incomplete domestication of an ancient grain from the Americas, amaranth. We sequenced 121 genomes of the crop and its wild ancestors to show that grain amaranth has been selected three times independently from a single wild ancestor, but has not been fully domesticated. Our analysis identified a MYB-like transcription factor gene as key regulator for seed color variation and shows that the trait was independently converted in Central and South America. We suggest a low effective population size at the time of domestication as potential cause for the lack of adaptation of complex domestication traits. Our results show how genetic constraints influenced domestication and might have set the fate of hundreds of crops.