VAVILOV’S CONCEPT OF CENTRES OF ORIGIN OF CROP PLANTS
Introduction The concept of Centres of Origin of crop plants was proposed in 1926 by the Russian botanist and geneticist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov . Through extensive plant exploration across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, Vavilov studied the geographical distribution of cultivated plants and their wild relatives. He observed that certain regions of the world showed extraordinary diversity of particular crops. Based on this, he proposed that cultivated plants originated in specific geographical regions where maximum genetic variation exists. These regions were termed Centres of Origin or Centres of Diversity . This theory forms the foundation of modern plant breeding, crop evolution, and germplasm conservation. Definition A Centre of Origin is defined as: A geographical region where a cultivated plant was first domesticated and where the maximum genetic diversity of that crop is found. Histo...