Outstanding Paper on Plant Genetic Resources
Crop adaptation in on-farm management by natural and conscious selection: A case study with lentil.
Bernd Horneburg and Heiko C. Becker
https://www.crops.org/membership/divisions/c08/papers
In this “back to the future” paper, the authors chose three farms with different soils and climatic conditions to test whether crop seed managed on-farm could be a way to conserve plant genetic resources while at the same time benefiting from their use, and enhancing biodiversity of the crop. The seeds selected for two to four years on each farm were superior in yield on that farm, compared to seeds selected at other locations. This showed that on-farm selection can create differences between seed sources (biodiversity), and that the differences can be positive and useful. Three different methods of selection, differing in several ways including the amount of time required to manage each one, were used on each farm. The authors recommend the simplest method, natural selection, as being a cost–efficient method for maintaining crop genetic diversity between farms.
Crop Sci. 2008 48: 203-212 http://crop.scijournals.org/cgi/reprint/48/1/203