Plants
Think about your morning routine. Regardless of how you start your day—with a leisurely breakfast, a wake-up shower, a hasty cup of coffee or even if you just slap on clean clothes and fly out the door—you can be sure that each facet of your morning ritual is connected to a plant product. Plants provide people with food, clothing, shelter, products to treat diseases and more. Plants are fundamental for all life. Without plants and the photosynthetic organisms that preceded them, there would be no appreciable oxygen in the atmosphere and no life as we know it.
Sadly, in our busy lives, we seldom take a moment to appreciate the beauty of plants, yet alone to remember all the products and services they provide for us. It is easy to overlook a tree without remembering that a single tree can provide us with oxygen, shelter and shade. There is a good chance that you rarely give cotton a second thought but cotton plants are the source of fibers that make up the bulk of human clothing. The humble potato is used to make a host of products from french fries to sizing (starch added to paper to make it stiff and to enhance ink uptake). Both cotton and potatoes were important in shaping the history of the United States. Throughout this course, it is hoped that you will gain a fuller appreciation for the importance of plants in human society.
Plant domestication altered human society and shaped the world we now inhabit. For over ninety percent of the history of modern human beings, we were primarily foragers. As foragers, human cultures developed a sophisticated body of knowledge of edible and utilitarian plant species. Long before the first plant was domesticated, wild plant products including seeds, fruits and roots provided sustenance to the human race. The gradual shift to reliance on agriculture and domesticated plants began around 10,000 years ago as several human cultures independently began to cultivate domesticated plants. The centers of crop origins are spread across the globe. Archeological evidence from the Fertile Crescent (in the modern-day Middle East), the mountains of South America, the valleys of Central America and the river valleys of Asia reveals that several different grains (corn, barley, wheat and rice), tubers (both white and sweet potatoes as well as other tubers) and fruits (such as squash) were among the earliest domesticated plants. In the modern world, representatives from the earliest domesticated grains still dominate world production with rice, wheat and corn accounting for over 60% of the world’s agricultural production. Domestication of plants was a gradual process. Over 3000 years passed before modern bread wheat evolved via artificial selection by humans from its ancestral relative, einkorn wheat. Modern crops such as corn bear little resemblance to their wild relatives. They have been shaped through selection by humans to fit our needs.