Chemical classification of grass pollen: a new tool for palynologists and archaeologists to study crop domestication

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Abstract

The grass family (Poaceae) is one of the most economically important plant groups in the world today. In particular many major food crops, including rice, wheat, maize, rye, barley, oats and millet, are grasses that were domesticated from wild progenitors over the course of the Holocene. Archaeological evidence has provided key information on domestication pathways of different grass lineages through time and space. However the most abundant empirical archive of floral change – the pollen record – has so far been underused for reconstructing grass domestication patterns, because of the challenges of classifying grass pollen grains based on their morphology alone. Here we test the potential of a novel approach for pollen classification based on the chemical signature of the pollen grains, measured using Fourier Transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy. Using a dataset of eight domesticated and wild grass species, we demonstrate a 95% classification success rate on training data, and an 80% classification success rate on validation data. This result shows that FTIR spectroscopy can provide enhanced taxonomic resolution for palynological studies, and further information on the spread of crop domestication and agriculture over the last 10000 years.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Jardine, Phillip

Professur für Paläobotanik (Prof. Kerp)