Abstract
The study of crop origins is of great interest both in the fields of evolutionary biology and applied crop research. The understanding of plant domestication involves multiple disciplines, including phylogeography, population genetics, anthropology and archaeology. In the past decade, they have prompted new discoveries on the evolutionary history of crops, including the date palm. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is the iconic fruit crop of hot and arid regions of North Africa and West Asia. It is the keystone species of oasis agrosystems and produces sugar-rich and nutritious fruits, the dates. There are many different date cultivars each with distinctive fruit traits as well as many wild Phoenix species forming a complex of related species. Alas, a complete understanding of date palm origins remains to be elucidated. The history of domestication and diversification of the date palm is a puzzling question. The consequences of these processes, both genetic and morphological, are only beginning to be revealed. The genetic architecture of the domestication traits is unknown. In this chapter, we place recent advances in the fields of population genomics and archaeobotany in the context of historical views of date palm domestication. We present new models for the possible origins of this emblematic species and detail the many areas in date palm domestication research that are uncertain and would benefit from further work.