Multiple post-domestication origins of kabuli chickpea through allelic variation in a diversification-associated transcription factor

Crop domestication and subsequent diversification represent adaptations to human-built environments and offer insights into the evolutionary forces that shape phenotypic diversity. Chickpea (Cicer arietinum), a widely cultivated food legume, was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent together with several other so-called founder crops (Zohary et al., 2012). This is evidenced by the Neolithic archeological record (Tanno & Wilcox, 2006) and the prevalence of crop wild relatives in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Cicer reticulatum, the wild annual Cicer species from which the cultigen is derived..