Abstract
Understanding the causes of maize landrace loss in farmers’ field is essential to design effective conservation strategies. These strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future. Previous studies have shown that this loss is caused by multiple factors. In this longitudinal study, we used a collection of 93 maize landrace accessions from Morelos, Mexico, and stored at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Maize Germplasm Bank, to trace back to the original 66 donor families after 50 years and explore the causes for why they abandoned or conserved their seed lots. We used an actor-centered approach, based on interviews and focus group discussions. We adopt a Multi-Level Perspective framework to examine loss as a process, accommodating multiple causes and the interactions among them. We found that the importance of maize landrace cultivation had diminished over the last 50 years in the study area. By 2017, 13 families had conserved a total of 14 seed lots directly descended from the 1967 collection. Focus group participants identified 60 accessions that could still be found in the surrounding municipalities. Our findings showed that multiple interconnected changes in maize cultivation technologies, as well as in maize markets, other crop markets, agricultural and land policies, cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change, have created an unfavorable environment for the conservation of maize landraces. Many of these processes were location- and landrace-specific, and often led to landrace abandonment during the shift from one farmer generation to the next.
Highlights
Ex situ and in situ conservation strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future for farmers, breeders and the society at large (Harlan and Martini 1936; Frankel 1950; Frankel and Bennett 1970)
Reduction of the cultivation of maize landraces in the families and municipalities Based on the 56 interviews we were able to complete (10 of the original 66 families were not found), it was evident that the importance of maize cultivation in general had diminished over the last 50 years among the families who donated seed to the Bank in 1967
Our longitudinal study allowed us to examine in situ conservation from a novel perspective (Ortega-Paczka 1973; Fenzi et al 2015)
Summary
Ex situ and in situ conservation strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future for farmers, breeders and the society at large (Harlan and Martini 1936; Frankel 1950; Frankel and Bennett 1970). Conservation in genebanks (ex situ) has been a key strategy for making accessions readily available for breeding and research; safeguarding samples of crop populations whose persistence is imminently threatened and protecting these resources from unpredictable crises or natural disasters in the field.. Conserving landrace populations in farmers’ fields (in situ) ensures that new genetic diversity is generated and, in turn, that natural and farmers’. This is especially important in the centers of origin and diversification of crops, as continuous selection allows landraces to adapt to climate change, biotic and abiotic stresses, farmers’ practices and users’ preferences. The conservation of landraces in farmers’ fields supports farmers’ rights to save and exchange germplasm and strengthens the role of developing countries in the conservation of global genetic resources (Brush 1995)
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