Cultivated plants are so firmly entrenched inhuman life, that few people think about where the story of their cultivation began. Consuming vegetables and fruits for food, a person does not wonder about how their wild relatives look and how diverse the variety of cultivated plants.
Historical facts
Almost all known today's cultural plants have their historical roots, which determine the centers of their appearance and gradual transformation.
The origin of cultivated plants is referred to as 50000-60 000 years BC. e. Until this period, the collection of plants was a way of surviving the tribe, which was the responsibility of women. Historical evidence that people began to select large and healthy grains and fruits to grow them near their homes are the ancient utensils, pots with supplies in burials and their drawings.
To date, of the most popular 640 speciesit is known that about 400 of them came from South Asia, 50 from Africa, more than 100 from South and North America, and the rest from Europe.
Interesting facts about a cultivated plant, for examplewheat, it is said that the cereals were the first species that people began to consciously grow near houses. Confirmation of this statement are the oldest mortars and pistils found in places of settlement of cave people.
Centers of plant cultivation
In the 20th century, scientists were able to more fully determine where modern species of cultivated plants came from. NI Vavilov also divided the geography of plant growing into 7 zones:
- Thus, South Asia became the progenitor of 33%domesticated species. Cultural plants (examples can be found in the writings of Vavilov), such as rice, sugarcane, cucumber, eggplant and many others, came to us from there.
- East Asia gave us 20% of cultivated species, such as soybean, millet, cherry, buckwheat.
- The South-West part of Asia is the birthplace of wheat, rye, legumes, turnips, which is 4% of plants.
- The Mediterranean part contains 11% of known cultivated plants. This garlic, grapes, carrots, cabbage, pear, lentils and others.
- Ethiopia became the birthplace of 4% of species, including chickpeas, barley, coffee tree.
- Central America gave the world corn, pumpkin, tobacco, cocoa.
- South America owns potatoes, coca, oki, cinchona.
Wild relatives of all these plants can still be found. On this interesting facts about a cultivated plant do not end there.
Selection of ancient people
It is hardly possible to call cave people or later types of human development by breeders, but they had some skills in selecting and growing plants.
Archaeologists have come to the conclusion that agriculture andA sedentary lifestyle as a way of survival became applicable 10,000 years ago. It is this period that is considered the beginning of plant acculturation. In fact, cultural plants (examples of which archaeologists find on the sites of ancient sites) began to divorce long before that.
As scientists suggest, the collected wildgrains, stone fruits and other types of plants grew near the camps of ancient people, when they poured grain or threw pits together with scraps. Women of the tribe were taken to pluck weeds near such "plantations" that have survived to the present day.
Gradually, man began to take away roots, grains andseeds of the most delicious and large fruits and purposefully planted them near their homes. Thus, agriculture was born, which gave impetus to a new level of human development.
The variety of cultivated plants in our days
In our time, breeding has become a science thatIt works not only on the yield of cultivated plants, but also on their taste and increased survival. Virtually all types of vegetables, fruits and grains that modern humans eat are hybrid, that is, artificially derived.
Interesting facts about a cultivated plant that has been subjected not only to selection, but to interbreeding with other species - this is what a completely new organism turns out to have, which has no analogues in nature.
Hybrids, artificially bred in laboratories, are disposable inoculum, but thanks to them the number of tasty, giving high yields of cultivated plants has increased hundreds of times.
Today, hybridity has affected both grain crops and fruits, and well-known vegetables, such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and many others.
Cultivated cucumbers
Cultivated plant cucumber is so familiar on our table, both fresh and canned, that we don’t ask ourselves: “where did he come to us from?”.
It turns out that the path of the cucumber on our table wasrather big, as his homeland is India and China. Even 6,000 years ago, this vegetable was domesticated, although its ancient relatives still grow in Indian forests, like lianas, twisting around tree trunks, and they are also used for gardening fences and fences.
On the frescoes in ancient Egypt, and then of ancient Greece, this vegetable was depicted on the tables of rich people and for a long time was available only to high-ranking individuals.
The cucumbers were brought to Europe by the Greeks, anddistribution has become rapid due to taste and the ability to salt for future use in winter. Today this vegetable is available to everyone and everywhere. Each gardener considers it his duty to grow a good crop of cucumbers, for which both his varietal and hybrid varieties are used.
The cultivation of indoor plants
People appreciated plants not only for their ability toto eat, but also for healing properties, as well as beauty. Interesting facts about the cultivated plant, which from a wild state has become the standard of beauty and tenderness, relate to roses.
The rose has become a symbolic flower in many nations.back in antiquity. Thus, according to Indian legends, Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty, was born in the bud of a rose. She was devoted to poems by poets in various countries and at all times, and her native land was tropical South-East Asia. It was from there that the rose cultural plant moved to Ancient Greece, where it was called the flower of Aphrodite. In ancient Rome, they even set up greenhouses for roses to bloom all year round.
Today, there are hundreds of varieties of this plant, bred for plant growers around the world.
Modern roses are grown in open ground, inpots on window sills, in greenhouses and winter greenhouses. Of them prepare tasty and healthy jam, and rose oil is considered one of the most expensive, since 500 kg of petals are used to produce one kilogram.
Cultivated fruits
As well as grains and vegetables, fruits have becomethe object of cultivation in ancient people. The beneficial properties of berry and fruit plants, as well as the ability to save them in dried or soaked form, made them permanent objects of storerooms. The most famous of the fruits are apples, the wild relatives of which are found in the layers of the Cretaceous period, and dates. Today, many fruit trees, which 200–300 years ago were considered foreign, grow habitually in gardens on private plots.
The future of cultivated plants
Breeders around the world are still working in their laboratories to create new crops that can take root in unusual conditions for them and give unprecedented yields.
Thanks to their efforts, cultivated plants better tolerate changes in climate, depletion of the soil layer of the Earth and at the same time yield good yields.
Many cultivated plants began to give twoharvest per year or per season, since they received a hybrid hardening. This gives hope that in the future, our tables will be fresh vegetables and fruits, whose homeland has long ceased to be separate countries, and the whole world has become.
