Fruit tree domestication and cultivation came after establishment of grain agriculture, probably during the fourth millenium B.C. While pattern of domestication has been similar in many fruit trees, domestication of some fruits preceded others. This was due to ease of vegetative propagation (grape, olive, date, fig, banana) or polyembryony (citrus, mango). Conservation of trees and vines and walling in preceded vegetative propagation. Collection from the wild is still practised with some wrops. Several are still grown from seed in spite of heterozygosity because of lack of grafting and geographical separation. Fruit trees domesticated comparatively early in spite of lack of vegetative propagation at that time, may have included edible nuts (e.g. almond) and self fertile Prunus species (peach, apricot, domestica plūm, sour cherry). Heterozygosity in plants raised from seed served as the main basis for selection since antiquity.

Spread of budding and grafting techniques enabled domestication in further crops. Some recent crops (e.g. avocado) can still be hardly considered “domesticated”. Early ancestors have sometimes claimed to be reconstituted (Prunus domestica), often surmised (apple, pear) or deducted from recent research and breeding results (citrus, banana).

Major changes under domestication include self fertility (peach, sour cherry), hermaphroditism (grape), elimination of bitterness (almond), lower resin (mango), and thornlessness (many crops). Significant changes also include polyembryony, persistance of syconia (fig), parthenocarpy, and seedlessness (banana, citrus).

There is now increased interest in fruit tree evolution and wild relatives for breeding, especially for disease tolerance and rootstocks, as well as for somatic fusion and genetic engineering.

Developments in Agricultural and Managed Forest Ecology, Volume 16