Traditional Amerindian cultivators combine directional and ideotypic selection for sustainable management of cassava genetic diversity

Plant domestication provides striking examples of rapid evolution. Yet, it involves more complex processes than plain directional selection. Understanding the dynamics of diversity in traditional agroecosystems is both a fundamental goal in evolutionary biology and a practical goal in conservation....

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Published inJournal of evolutionary biology Vol. 22; no. 6; pp. 1317 - 1325
Main Authors DUPUTIÉ, A, MASSOL, F, DAVID, P, HAXAIRE, C, McKEY, D
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Oxford, UK : Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2009
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Wiley
Subjects
Agriculture
Agronomy
Anthropology, Cultural
artificial selection
Botany
cassava
Evolutionary biology
Genetic Variation
Genetics
Heterozygote
Humans
Inbreeding
Life Sciences
Manihot - genetics
Microsatellite Repeats
Native North Americans
natural selection
Plants genetics
Population genetics
relatedness
Seedlings
Selection, Genetic
Sustainable development
INBREEDING
NATURAL SELECTION
ARTIFICIAL SELECTION
CASSAVA
RELATEDNESS
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Summary:Plant domestication provides striking examples of rapid evolution. Yet, it involves more complex processes than plain directional selection. Understanding the dynamics of diversity in traditional agroecosystems is both a fundamental goal in evolutionary biology and a practical goal in conservation. We studied how Amerindian cultivators maintain dynamically evolving gene pools in cassava. Farmers purposely maintain diversity in the form of phenotypically distinct, clonally propagated landraces. Landrace gene pools are continuously renewed by incorporating seedlings issued from spontaneous sexual reproduction. This poses two problems: agronomic quality may decrease because some seedlings are inbred, and landrace identity may be progressively lost through the incorporation of unrelated seedlings. Using a large microsatellite dataset, we show that farmers solve these problems by applying two kinds of selection: directional selection against inbred genotypes, and counter-selection of off-type phenotypes, which maintains high intra-landrace relatedness. Thus, cultural elements such as ideotypes (a representation of the ideal phenotype of a landrace) can shape genetic diversity.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01749.x
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ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01749.x