ABSTRACT
The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe. Recent DNA studies on humans point to a striking structure correlating genes with geography around the Mediterranean Sea with characteristic east to west clines of gene flow. The gene flow from Anatolia to Europe was through Dodecanese, Crete, and the Southern European coast. The use of cereal grains made the forefathers less dependent on hunting and collecting. This way of life was without any alternative, considering bigger population of people in villages and an increase in birth. At some point in time then it came to cereal cropping with various types of specialization.
More that practices and skills were involved as improved germplasm was selected and preserved via seed and graft from harvest-to-harvest and generation-to-generation. The sum total of these technologies makes up the traditional lore of agriculture, horticulture, and breeding. Without the knowledge about the development of a scientific discipline, nobody is able to judge the recent achievements and to weigh the future chances. Otherwise, one could overestimate the presence too much. Who traces its way back recognizes that the performances and breeding of crop plants are based on centuries- and even millennium-old experiences, such as, for barley. Most of the crop plants are thus the result of a long development process. They are derived from wild types, which are known quite well. Others are the result of spontaneous crosses unifying the genes of two independent species within a hybrid. Under specific circumstances, the linkage of genes remains stable without a following segregation or dissociation. Bread wheat, domesticated plum, maize, rice, and rapeseed have evolved in this way.
Plant breeding does not confine itself to the supplement of useful traits but also on the improvement of already available characteristics. Genetic engineering makes feasible even an interspecific and an intergeneric transfer of alien characteristics, as well as the creation of novel traits.
