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The cultivation and domestication of wheat and barley in Iran, brief review of a long history

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Abstract

Wheat and barley are among the most important staple foods, originally exploited, cultivated and domesticated in the Near East, in places between the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Western slopes of the Zagros Mountains, at the beginning of the Holocene epoch. Almost all wild progenitors of the domesticated species of wheat and barley naturally grow in Iran, a Near Eastern Country, and were frequently exploited by the residents of the Iranian plateau throughout history. The cultivation of grains was initiated by hunter-gatherers dwelled in Iran as a supplementary source of food in the 12th millennium BP; however, the domestication of wheat and barley, in the 10th millennium BP, revolutionized life-style of the Iranian people, and led to a gradual but steady increase in the complexity of human societies in Iran. Every aspects of grain cultivation and its technical difficulties pushed forward human societies to develop more and more efficient methods of cultivation, irrigation, transportation, storage and reservation, food preparation, trade and commercialization, governmental taxation and scientific exploration and invention, which were reviewed briefly in the current manuscript on the basis of the available archaeological and archaeobotanical literature, covering a timespan from 12th millennium BP to 1st millennium AD.

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Acknowledgements

We are tremendously grateful to Dr. Jebrael Nokandeh, the director of National Museum of Iran (Tehran), and the Museum staffs for providing access to the relevant archeological collections and permission to use images from his personal collection as well as the Museum official website (http://irannationalmuseum.ir). In addition, we are highly in debt of Mr. Mehdi Aliabadi, Mr. Mohammad Zia Hoseini, Mr. Mohammad Mohammadi and Mr. Abd Al-Haq Pooryaghoub for the photographs. The authors wish to show their gratitude to Dr. John Edmondson (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK) for his thoughtful suggestions and in-depth edit of the manuscript. Last, but not the least, we are sincerely thankful of the instructive comments and valuable suggestions of the reviewers.

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  1. Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, 15719-14911, Iran

    Farrokh Ghahremaninejad, Ehsan Hoseini & Sahar Jalali

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Ehsan Hoseini and Farrokh Ghahremaninejad conceptualized the idea, Ehsan Hoseini and Sahar Jalali performed the literature search, the first manuscript was written by Ehsan Hoseini with input from all the authors, the manuscript was revised by Farrokh Ghahremaninejad and Sahar Jalali, images were provided by Farrokh Ghahremaninejad and Sahar Jalali.

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Correspondence to Ehsan Hoseini.

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Ghahremaninejad, F., Hoseini, E. & Jalali, S. The cultivation and domestication of wheat and barley in Iran, brief review of a long history. Bot. Rev. 87, 1–22 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12229-020-09244-w

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