The origin of 'black gold'

Did you know that the origin of Indian pepper or ‘black gold’ has links to Gondwanaland?

As per recent studies, the spread of genus Piper is linked to how the current Indian landmass separated from Gondwana when the Indian plate hit the Eurasian plate.

Pepper belongs to the family Piperaceae, which contains over 1,500 species globally including 600 in South Asia. For the study, researchers collected leaf samples of Piper species in India to trace the origin.

The genomic analyses of the samples revealed three major branches consisting of species that are direct descendants of a Gondwanan ancestor. They correspond to the species distributed in the Asian tropics (the Himalayas, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines along with Andaman & Nicobar Islands), South Pacific (Pacific Islands and New Zealand) and Neotropical region (North, Central and South America), all of which were a part of the Gondwanaland supercontinent.

The researchers dated the origin of the Piper to the Cretaceous period around 79 million years ago after which the genus established itself in India during the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago), independent of those species from Southeast Asia. Phylogenetic analyses disclosed that migrations of Piper between Eurasia and Africa via the Arabian Peninsula. The collision between the Indian and Eurasian land masses away from Gondwana around 55-42 million years ago might have paved way for exchange in plants and animals between the two masses.

The study revealed that following the collision, Piper arrived in India from South Asia and underwent diversifications and then dispersed back to Southeast Asia. The team also found that widely cultivated Piper nigrum originated in the Western Ghats during the Late Miocene period 6.3 million years ago.

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