WILD AND CULTIVATED PLANTS - THE PARALLELISM BETWEEN EVOLUTION AND DOMESTICATION

Evolution is commonly described as the splitting up of an evolutionary lineage into two separate ones, a process called cladogenesis. Plant domestication can be described as the changes necessary in order to ad apt plants to habitats especially prepared by man. Anagenesis or adapt ation, which is the gradual change in time within a lineage, will be t aken into account when discussing the differences between evolution an d domestication. A formal descriptive model consisting of processes (m utation, hybridisation), modifiers (selection, drift), entities (isola tion barriers), and causal and stochastical relationships between proc esses will be used in these discussions. Mutation, hybridisation, poly ploidisation, selection and drift are all part of both evolution and d omestication, although their relative importance may vary. Adaptation as the objective of both processes includes widely different character istics. The plant breeding method of transformation by means of a bact erial vector is not known in nature. Classification of the variation r esulting from evolution and domestication is based on different princi ples.