From a Fertile Idea to a Fertile Arc: The Origins of Broomcorn Millet 15 Years On

Variation of millet grain size and cooking techniques across Asia between the late fourth and first millennia BC

“…Culinary practices are a likely driver of the observed pattern. Broomcorn and foxtail millet were first cultivated in northern China before 6000 BC and dispersed beyond their centre of origins after 5000 BC (Liu et al 2018;Stevens et al 2021). In northern China, grain cooking traditions in the Neolithic centred on boiling and steaming, methods that favoured stickycereal varieties and small grains as the larger surface area to volume ratio of smaller grains increases cooking efficiency (Hunt et al 2018, Ritchey et al 2022.…”

Did crops expand in tandem with culinary practices from their region of origin? Evidence from ancient DNA and material culture

“…Patterns of diversity in microsatellite and GBSSI markers support a population origin of cultivated broomcorn millet in the western Loess Plateau of north-central China (Hunt et al 2018). Archaeological evidence suggests that broomcorn millet was cultivated as a staple grain by at least 8000 years ago in a series of piedmont locations across the Loess Plateau (Liu et al 2018). The ancestral state in wild cereals is non-sticky endosperm starch, with sticky types having arisen independently among different species, through diverse mutations in the GBSSI gene.…”

“…Accumulating evidence suggests that staple cereals were the earliest commodities exchanged between East Asia and western Eurasia (Liu et al 2016(Liu et al , 2017(Liu et al , 2018Spengler et al 2016;Zhang et al 2017;Tian et al 2018;Y. Li 2021).…”