🧜🏼‍♀️ Center of Origin

• A center of origin (or center of diversity) is a geographical area where a group of organisms, either domesticated or wild, first developed its distinctive properties.
• They are also considered centers of diversity.
• Centers of origin were first identified in 1924 by N. Vavilov.
• Vavilov centers are regions where a high diversity of crop wild relatives can be found, representing the natural relatives of domesticated crop plants. Later in 1935 Vavilov divided the centers into 12, giving the following list:
  1. Chinese center
  2. Indian center
  3. Indo-Malayan center
  4. Central Asiatic center
  5. Persian center
  6. Mediterranean center
  7. Abyssinian center
  8. North American center
  9. South American center
  10. Central American center
  11. Chilean center
  12. Brazilian-Paraguayan center

Origin Places of Important Crops

Law of homologous series

• The concept of parallel variation also known as law of homologous series of variation was developed by Vavilov (1951) based on his study of crop diversity and centres of origin.
• Law of homologous series states that a particular variation observed in a crop species is also expected to be available in its related species.
• For instance, if we get dwarf collections in one species of a crop, the same may be observed in another related species also.
• Vavilov used principle of homologous series of variation as a clue for discovering similar characters in related species.