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PLANT DOMESTICATION

When bitter is better

Nature Plants volume 5, pages 1205–1206 (2019)Cite this article

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Cultivation of high-tannin sorghum in Africa is associated with herbivore threat from red-billed quelea, but also with reduced sensation of bitterness in humans.

We humans do not put a lot of bitter food on our plates. Although many of us appreciate a certain degree of bitterness in some popular beverages (for example, tea, coffee, beer and red wine), most of our staple food is free from the bitter taste. Sorghum, which is a staple crop in many African countries and the fifth most grown cereal worldwide1, is a notable exception. While the taste and texture of many sorghum varieties can be compared to whole grain wheat or rice, about a half of the sorghum cultivated in Africa has a distinctly astringent taste. The astringency is an ancestral trait inherited from wild sorghum and is caused by high levels of particular phenolic compounds — condensed tannins — that have accumulated in the seed coat. Since condensed tannins have been purged from other cereal crops during domestication2 and many people have strong preference for non-tannin sorghum, it may seem puzzling why so many African farmers choose to grow high tannin varieties. In this issue of Nature Plants, Wu et al.3 identify the second of two genes that are responsible for the presence/absence variation of condensed tannins in the sorghum grain and describe a fascinating evolutionary interplay between the farmers, the crop and the environment, which helps to explain the persistence of bitter sorghum on African farmland.

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Fig. 1: Interplay of various selection forces associated with low- and high-tannin sorghum.

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  1. INRA-Université Clermont-Auvergne, UMR 1095 GDEC, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Peter Civáň

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  1. Peter Civáň
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Correspondence to Peter Civáň.

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Civáň, P. When bitter is better. Nat. Plants 5, 1205–1206 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0567-9

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