title: Mesoamerican origin of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is revealed by sequence data.
abstract: Knowledge about the origins and evolution of crop species represents an important prerequisite for efficient conservation and use of existing plant materials. This study was designed to solve the ongoing debate on the origins of the common bean by investigating the nucleotide diversity at five gene loci of a large sample that represents the entire geographical distribution of the wild forms of this species. Our data clearly indicate a Mesoamerican origin of the common bean. They also strongly support the occurrence of a bottleneck during the formation of the Andean gene pool that predates the domestication, which was suggested by recent studies based on multilocus molecular markers. Furthermore, a remarkable result was the genetic structure that was seen for the Mesoamerican accessions, with the identification of four different genetic groups that have different relationships with the sets of wild accessions from the Andes and northern Peru-Ecuador. This finding implies that both of the gene pools from South America originated through different migration events from the Mesoamerican populations that were characteristic of central Mexico.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Alimentari ed Ambientali,  Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131 Ancona,  Italy.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bitocchi
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nanni
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bellucci
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Giardini
authors.forename: Pierluigi Spagnoletti
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Zeuli
authors.forename: Giuseppina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Logozzo
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stougaard
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: McClean
authors.forename: Giovanna
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Attene
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Papa
mesh_terms: D002489:Central America; D017343:Genes, Plant; D006239:Haplotypes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D027805:Phaseolus / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA