Data from: Patterns of domestication in the Ethiopian oil-seed crop Noug (Guizotia abyssinica)

Noug (Guizotia abyssinica) is a semi-domesticated oil-seed crop, which is primarily cultivated in Ethiopia. Unlike its closest crop relative, sunflower, noug has small seeds, small flowering heads, many branches, many flowering heads, indeterminate flowering, and it shatters in the field. Here we conducted common garden studies and microsatellite analyses of genetic variation to test whether high levels of crop-wild gene flow and/or unfavorable phenotypic correlations have hindered noug domestication. With the exception of one population, analyses of microsatellite variation failed to detect substantial recent admixture between noug and its wild progenitor. Likewise, only very weak correlations were found between seed mass and the number or size of flowering heads. Thus, noug's 'atypical' domestication syndrome does not seem to be a consequence of recent introgression or unfavorable phenotypic correlations. Nonetheless, our data do reveal evidence of local adaptation of noug cultivars to different precipitation regimes, as well as high levels of phenotypic plasticity, which may permit reasonable yields under diverse environmental conditions. Why noug has not been fully domesticated remains a mystery, but perhaps early farmers selected for resilience to episodic drought or untended environments rather than larger seeds. Domestication may also have been slowed by noug's outcrossing mating system.Noug microsatellite dataThis file contains microsatellite scores (allele fragment lengths) for 16 loci and 639 individuals, representing 33 populations of noug (Guizotia abyssinica) and it's wild relative (Guizotia scabra ssp. schimperii).noug_microsatellitest.txtNoug phenotypic dataThis file contains phenotypic data collected on the level of individuals (sheet: Noug_Individual_Data), accessions (sheet: Noug_Pooled_Data) and environmental data of the collecting sites (sheet: Environmental_Data).noug_pheno_data.xls