Integrating multiple disciplines to locate the origins of domestication of crops

The origins of initial domestication of crops have long intrigued researchers across disciplines, with implications for genetic resource utilization and conservation. Building on the pioneering multidisciplinary methodologies proposed by de Candolle and expanded by Vavilov, this narrative review synthesizes the roles of botany, biogeography, genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and history to identify domestication origins. Botany determines species' names, identifies relatives, characterizes phenotypic variability, and offers enormous datasets for analysis. Biogeography synthesizes information from diverse disciplines across space and time. Genetics and genomics allow examination of population diversity, structure, relationships, and divergence times. Archaeology supplies data about when and where people started to use each crop and archaeobotany can confirm phenotypic changes in crops through time. Linguistics furnishes data about how people dispersed crops through space and time. History offers additional data about uses, dispersal and importance, sometimes during the last few thousand years, as in China, but only the last 500 years in the Neotropics. Here we demonstrate that a comprehensive, multidisciplinary framework enhances the accuracy of identifying domestication origins, and we use peach palm ( Bactris gasipaes Kunth) and cacao ( Theobroma cacao L.) as examples of how to find the origins of domestication using multiple disciplines. The case of cupuaçu ( T. grandiflorum (Willd. ex Spreng.) Schum.) is offered as a cautionary note.