Domestication has been influenced by formal plant breeding since the onset of intensive agriculture and the Green Revolution. Despite providing food security for some regions, intensive agriculture ...has had substantial detrimental consequences for the environment and does not fulfill smallholder's needs under most developing countries conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to look for alternative plant production techniques, effective for each environmental, socio-cultural, and economic conditions. This is particularly relevant for countries that are megadiverse and major centers of plant domestication and diversification. In this white paper, a Mexico-centered initiative is proposed, with two main objectives: (1) to study, understand, conserve, and sustainably use the genetic diversity of domesticated plants and their wild relatives, as well as the ongoing evolutionary processes that generate and maintain it; and (2) to strengthen food and forestry production in a socially fair and environmentally friendly way. To fulfill these objectives, the initiative focuses on the source of variability available for domestication (
and
), the context in which domestication acts (
and
) and one of its main challenges (
). Research on these components can be framed to target and connect both the theoretical understanding of the evolutionary processes, the practical aspects of conservation, and food and forestry production. The target, main challenges, problems to be faced and key research questions are presented for each component, followed by a roadmap for the consolidation of this proposal as a national initiative.
Crop wild relatives (CWR) intra- and interspecific diversity is essential for crop breeding and food security. However, intraspecific genetic diversity, which is central given the idiosyncratic ...threats to species in landscapes, is usually not considered in planning frameworks. Here, we introduce an approach to develop proxies of genetic differentiation to identify conservation areas, applying systematic conservation planning tools that produce hierarchical prioritizations of the landscape. It accounts for: (i) evolutionary processes, including historical and environmental drivers of genetic diversity, and (ii) threat processes, considering taxa-specific tolerance to human-modified habitats, and their extinction risk status. Our analyses can be used as inputs for developing national action plans for the conservation and use of CWR. Our results also inform public policy to mitigate threat processes to CWR (like crops living modified organisms or agriculture subsidies), and could advise future research (e.g. for potential germplasm collecting). Although we focus on Mesoamerican CWR within Mexico, our methodology offers opportunities to effectively guide conservation and monitoring strategies to safeguard the evolutionary resilience of any taxa, including in regions of complex evolutionary histories and mosaic landscapes.
Societal Impact Statement
Crop wild relatives (CWR) are plant taxa closely related to crops and are a source of high genetic diversity that can help adapt crops to the impacts of global change, ...particularly to meet increasing consumer demand in the face of the climate crisis. CWR provide vital ecosystem services and are increasingly important for food and nutrition security and sustainable and resilient agriculture. They therefore are of major biological, social, cultural and economic importance. Assessing the extinction risk of CWR is essential to prioritise in situ and ex situ conservation strategies in Mesoamerica to guarantee the long‐term survival and availability of these resources for present and future generations worldwide.
Summary
Ensuring food security is one of the world's most critical issues as agricultural systems are already being impacted by global change. Crop wild relatives (CWR)—wild plants related to crops—possess genetic variability that can help adapt agriculture to a changing environment and sustainably increase crop yields to meet the food security challenge.
Here we report the results of an extinction risk assessment of 224 wild relatives of some of the world's most important crops (i.e. chilli pepper, maize, common bean, avocado, cotton, potato, squash, vanilla and husk tomato) in Mesoamerica—an area of global significance as a centre of crop origin, domestication and of high CWR diversity.
We show that 35% of the selected CWR taxa are threatened with extinction according to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List demonstrates that these valuable genetic resources are under high anthropogenic threat. The dominant threat processes are land use change for agriculture and farming, invasive and other problematic species (e.g. pests, genetically modified organisms) and use of biological resources, including overcollection and logging. The most significant drivers of extinction relate to smallholder agriculture—given its high incidence and ongoing shifts from traditional agriculture to modern practices (e.g. use of herbicides)—smallholder ranching and housing and urban development and introduced genetic material.
There is an urgent need to increase knowledge and research around different aspects of CWR. Policies that support in situ and ex situ conservation of CWR and promote sustainable agriculture are pivotal to secure these resources for the benefit of current and future generations.
Crop wild relatives (CWR) are plant taxa closely related to crops and are a source of high genetic diversity that can help adapt crops to the impacts of global change, particularly to meet increasing consumer demand in the face of the climate crisis. CWR provide vital ecosystem services and are increasingly important for food and nutrition security, and sustainable and resilient agriculture. They therefore are of major biological, social, cultural and economic importance. Assessing the extinction risk of CWR is essential to prioritise in situ and ex situ conservation strategies in Mesoamerica to guarantee the long‐term survival and availability of these resources for present and future generations worldwide.
Transforming the Maize Treadmill Gasman, Francisca Acevedo; Baker, Lauren E.; Bellon, Mauricio R. ...
True Cost Accounting for Food,
2021
Book Chapter
Maize is at the center of agricultural transformations globally and has had profound consequences on biodiversity and ecosystem services, agricultural systems, and diets. This chapter highlights four ...True Cost Accounting applications undertaken in very different maize systems in Mexico, the USA, Malawi, and Zambia. An assessment of maize by colleagues at the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity in Mexico reveals the importance of smallholder agricultural systems for agricultural biodiversity.
Maize is at the center of agricultural transformations globally and has had profound consequences on biodiversity and ecosystem services, agricultural systems, and diets. This chapter highlights four True Cost Accounting applications undertaken in very different maize systems in Mexico, the USA, Malawi, and Zambia. An assessment of maize by colleagues at the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity in Mexico reveals the importance of smallholder agricultural systems for agricultural biodiversity. The case studies strive to describe the broader political, ecological, social, and cultural systems in which they are embedded, illustrating the challenge of systemic framing. Because the studies are so different, there is a challenge related to finding a common vocabulary for TCA. The studies balance an imperative to address the historical forces that shape food systems while focusing on direct and indirect costs.
El objetivo de la presente investigacion fue localizar regiones cromosomicas involucradas en la resistencia de progreso lento a la roya de la hoja (Puccinia recondita f.sp. tritici) en trigo, ...utilizando marcadores moleculares denominados RFLPs. Se escogio utilizar un progenitor suceptible (Siete Cerros) y un progenitor resistente (Parula) y una poblacion de lineas recombinantes endogamicas a nivel F7 creada a partir de la cruza de los dos progenitores. Para detectar polimorfismo entre los progenitores de la cruza, 242 sondas aisladas del genoma de trigo (WG) y del cADN de trigo (IPSR), de cebada (BCD) y de Avena (CDO), fueron evaluadas con cinco endonucleasas de restriccion (EcoRI,EcoRV,HindIII,BamHIyDraI). Se detectaron fragmentos polimorfos con 70 de ellas. Se obtuvieron 53 loci de RFLPs al evaluar 77 lineas recombinantes endogamicas F7 con 43 sondas que habian detectado polimorfismo entre los progenitores; 43 segregaron de acuerdo a lo esperado (1:1) y 10 no se ajustaron a la segregacion. Utilizando el programa computacional JOINMAP, se determino la existencia de 12 grupos de ligamiento mediante el analisis de ligamiento de 2 puntos de los 53 loci de RFLPs y el orden de los loci ligados en cada grupo fue establecido usando el analisis de puntos multiples. Haciendo un analisis estadistico se identificaron dos marcadores potenciales para la caracteristica de progreso lento de la roya de la hoja en trigo. Uno de estos marcadores era un marcador fenologico ya anteriormente utilizado en el campo por los fitomejoradores para identificar al gen complejo Lr34, un componente del progreso lento de la roya de la hoja en trigo.
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