Annual Plant Reviews (2009) 38, 238–295 www.interscience.wiley.com doi: 10.1002/9781444314557.ch7 Chapter 7 SEED DISPERSAL AND CROP DOMESTICATION: SHATTERING, GERMINATION AND SEASONALITY IN EVOLUTION UNDER CULTIVATION Dorian Q. Fuller 1 and Robin Allaby 2 1 Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK 2 Warwick, HRI, University of Warwick, Wellesbourne, Warwick, UK ‘The Angiosperm seed had a double significance. It not only gave command of dry land to plant life, but it provided the means by which mankind has been able to obtain an ample and assured food supply. To the Angiosperm seed, perhaps more than to any other structure, the economic evolution of the human race is due.’ Oakes Ames (1939, p. 5) Abstract: The transition between wild plant forms and domesticated species can be considered an evolutionary adaptation by plants in response to a human driven ecology. Evidence from archaeobotany and genetics is providing deeper insight into this evolutionary process in terms of its scale, mechanism and parallelism between species. The evidence indicates that the timescale of this evolution was considerably longer than previously supposed, raising questions about the mode of human mediated selection pressure and increasing the importance of the role of pre-domestication cultivation. Different selection pressures were chronologically separated into at least three stages, each important at different points of the evolu- tionary process affecting different traits. Early selection pressures were ultimately driven by the pre-domestication sowing activities affecting the polygenically con- trolled germination and seed size traits. Later, in the second stage, release of natu- ral selection pressures of dispersal requirements led to modification of architecture such as awns loss of awns and increase in dispersal unit size. The loss of disper- sal requirement combined with positive pressure through harvesting practice led 238 Fruit Development and Seed Dispersal Edited by Lars Østergaard © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-18946-0