Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation Research Articles

Assessing indigenous and local knowledge of farmers about pollination services in cucurbit agro-ecosystem of Punjab, Pakistan.

Being the ultimate beneficiary of ecosystem services provided by on-farm agricultural biodiversity, the participation of farmers in its sustainable utilization and conservation is crucial. How much aware they are with the significance and conservation of agricultural biodiversity in order to improve their crop yield remains unclear, especially from the developing courtiers. Pollination is one of such ecosystem services, enormously contributed by the wild bees. In the present study, we have investigated the knowledge of farmers about bees and pollination in general in three districts i.e. Multan, Bahawalpur and Khanewal of southern Punjab, Pakistan. Some 300 farmers (100 cucurbit growers in each district using convenient sampling method) were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Respondents were first presented with a box of insect specimens and then were asked to identify bees among those. Those who identified correctly were asked to state about their nesting sites. Only 11% of the respondents could correctly identify the bees and half of them could report something about nesting sites. A majority (63%) of the farmers was unable to tell fertilization requirements in cucurbits, 59% could not distinguish female flower from the male flower and 64% could not state any benefit of bees. However, upon briefing about the significance of bee pollinators, 58% of the farmers showed eagerness to conserve bees at their farms. Keeping in view the inadequacies of farmers' knowledge about wild bees and pollination in general, the present study also gives some policy recommendations.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for Small-Scale Farms in Developed Economies: Challenges and Opportunities.

Small-scale farms are an important component of agricultural production even in developed economies, and have an acknowledged role in providing other biological and societal benefits, including the conservation of agricultural biodiversity and enhancement of local food security. Despite this, the small-farm sector is currently underserved in relation to the development and implementation of scale-appropriate Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices that could help increase such benefits. This review details some of the characteristics of the small farm sectors in developed economies (with an emphasis on the USA and Europe), and identifies some of the characteristics of small farms and their operators that may favor the implementation of IPM. Some of the challenges and opportunities associated with increasing the uptake of IPM in the small-farm sector are discussed. For example, while some IPM tactics are equally applicable to virtually any scale of production, there are others that may be easier (or more cost-effective) to implement on a smaller scale. Conversely, there are approaches that have not been widely applied in small-scale production, but which nevertheless have potential for use in this sector. Examples of such tactics are discussed. Knowledge gaps and opportunities for increasing IPM outreach to small-scale producers are also identified.

Determining factors for the diversity of hulless barley agroecosystem in the himalaya region—A case study from Northwest Yunnan, China

Traditional barley agroecosystem in the Himalaya region harbour a great diversity of hulless barley landraces. This diversity has been considered largely impacted by agro-ecozone factors as documents by former researches. Five case study sites were selected from Northwest Yunnan to represent five agro-ecozones: Tangman (hot and dry valley), Kena (hot and wet valley), Hongpo (alpine region), Napa (marshy wetland), and Xiangka (mild slopes in high plateau). A participatory rural appraisal was carried out to acquire data for 28 cultural, socio-economic, ecological and agricultural factors in these five sites from 2012 to 2014. Multiple correspondence analysis was conducted to evaluate the weight of the selected factors on the diversity of agroecosystems. Results showed that the diversity and percentage of hulless barley in the area was largely differentiated between the zones, and the differences principally originated from 5 factors, including Religious hulless barley use, Weight of fodder using, Chemical fertilizer, Crop varieties, and Seed exchange consumption. Cultural factors were the most influencing factors, followed by agricultural factors, natural factors and the last social factors. In the cultural factors, religious use hulless barley and seed exchange customs were very important. High elevation and farmers’ distance from cities were the most important factors fostering on-farm hulless barley landrace diversity. The conservation of agricultural biodiversity in traditional Tibetan agriculture ecosystem should be emphasized.

Role of Biotechnology in Conservation and Utilization of Agricultural Biodiversity

Biological diversity provides the variety of life on the earth and agricultural diversity forms a part of it. Agricultural biodiversity refers to the variability among and between all forms of life relevant to food and agriculture. The Indian subcontinent is recognized as one of the important centres of origin of crop plants. There are around 811 plant species under cultivation in India with more than 900 wild relatives which are distributed over different biogeographic regions of the country. However, rapid genetic erosion of the species and surrounding ecosystem due to various factors is a big threat to this diversity. Biodiversity conservation is a global concern and all the member states of the Convention on Biological Diversity are taking measures to preserve both native and agricultural biodiversity. Biotechnological tools are proving valuable for effective and efficient conservation efforts of agricultural plant genetic resources. Among the various applications available, tissue culture, molecular marker technology, establishment of DNA banks and genotypic database for various crops and accessions have been delineated in this paper.

Morphological characterisation of Cucurbita maxima Duchesne (Cucurbitaceae) landraces from the Po Valley (Northern Italy)

Identifying crop genetic resources represent an important aspect of agricultural biodiversity conservation. However, conservation of landraces is challenging because they often cannot be properly identified, or have already suffered from genetic erosion, or have disappeared. Identification of landraces can be obtained using molecular markers or discriminating qualitative and quantitative morphological traits. The latter methodology is cheap and easily achievable, allowing the registration of landraces in national catalogues. In this study, we carried out a morphological characterisation of different accessions of Cucurbita maxima (Cucurbitaceae) cultivated in the Po Valley (N-Italy), locally known as Cappello da prete. The aim was to explore the morphological fruit variability among accessions and to identify potential distinct landraces within the Cappello da prete squash group. Differences between accessions were found indicating that morphological traits can be effectively used to identify these landraces and suggesting a diversification by isolation. Indeed, our morphological analysis shown the existence of two different landraces of Cappello da prete squashes. The adopted procedure can demonstrate that few low-cost traits are useful for the registration of local varieties in the official catalogue of landraces. Our study also demonstrates that morphological characterisation allows a rapid and cost-effective identification of diagnostic morphological traits that, together with historical and cultural information, are fundamental to recognise landraces.

Plants: Crop diversity pre‐breeding technologies as agrarian care co‐opted?

Within the realm of international agricultural biodiversity conservation, there has been a surge of funding for “pre‐breeding” of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Molecular high‐throughput analysis, among other techniques, attempts to discern, document, and digitise the genomic traits of farmer/landrace varieties and crop wild relatives stored in gene banks to render them legible fodder for professional breeding. But pre‐breeding necessitates thorough phenotypic evaluation and characterisation to understand the physiological attributes, heritable traits, and responses of a plant through its life cycle, under various growing and climactic conditions. This paper explores the irony that a range of surveillance technologies have been developed and deployed to mimic the agrarian work and skills of observing plants and attending to how they are faring, what they like and do not like over many seasons and contexts. These calls and technologies acknowledge the need for heedful attention to crops, even as they further displace actual farmers and their longstanding modes of selecting and saving open‐pollinated seeds each harvest. Here, attending to crops entails remembering and communicating collectively gathered information of and from the plant. Such agrarian expertise of caring for plants has been systematically devalued and de‐intellectualised, with gendered implications. Drawing on feminist geographies and political ecology, a landscape of care framework discloses the matrix of human and beyond‐human care at work in cultivating agricultural biodiversity. Rather than ushering in a new valuation of this expertise, new pre‐breeding technologies and trainings continue to ignore on‐farm, plant‐based care work and the farmers who do it. Calling out this contradiction could help re‐centre such agrarian care skills as the crux to effective agricultural biodiversity utilisation. The proliferation of pre‐breeding technologies could signify the co‐optation of agrarian care skills or the opportunity to re‐centre and revalue them.

Finding CreativeVoice: Applying Arts-Based Research in the Context of Biodiversity Conservation

The integration of creative arts–based methods into scientific research offers a host of advantages, including the ability to capture the complex texture of lived experience, explore interconnections between nature and culture, support nonhierarchical relations, and communicate insights in engaging and empowering new ways. In this article, we describe a new method—CreativeVoice—integrating the creative arts and qualitative research, which we developed and applied in a context of pursuing community-based conservation of agricultural biodiversity. We developed CreativeVoice as an integrative method to help us understand the local contexts, cultures, and perspectives from community members of different ages and genders, in two contrasting farming communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. CreativeVoice effectively adapts and extends the Photovoice method so as to retain its benefits but address some of its limitations. This includes allowing participants to choose a genre of artistic expression connected to their own specific individual or cultural contexts and providing the capacity to move beyond capturing present-day realities to directly bring in connections to the past and visions for the future. This article describes both the CreativeVoice approach and the significant value of integrating arts-based methods into research for advancing sustainability.

Brazilian melon landraces resistant to Podosphaera xanthii are unique germplasm resources

Podosphaera xanthii is the most important causal agent of powdery mildew in melon, a crop ranked within the most economically important species worldwide. The best strategy to face this fungus disease, which causes important production losses, is the development of genetically resistant cultivars. Genetic breeding programmes require sources of resistance, and a few ones have been reported in melon, mostly in Momordica and Acidulus horticultural groups. However, the existence of many races that reduces the durability of the resistance makes necessary to find new resistant genotypes with different genetic backgrounds.In this work, Brazilian germplasm, together with a set of Indian landraces, and the COMAV's (Institute for the Conservation and Breeding of Agricultural Biodiversity) melon core collection, representing the whole variability of the species, were assessed for resistance against some common races in Spain and Brazil and genotyped with a 123‐SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms) genotyping platform to study the molecular relationships of the resistant accessions. In the first experiment, carried out in Valencia (Spain) in 2013, seventy‐nine melon accessions were evaluated using artificial inoculation. Five accessions selected as resistant were also evaluated against races 1, 3, and 5 in Mossoró (Brazil, 2015) and against race 3.5 in Valencia (2016) under greenhouse conditions, and under four field conditions in Brazil. The accessions, AL‐1, BA‐3, CE‐3, and RN‐2, within the Brazilian collection, presented resistance against all the races of P. xanthii assayed in all conditions tested. AL‐1, CE‐3 and RN‐2 were molecularly more similar to wild agrestis and Acidulus melons from Asia and Africa, while BA‐3 grouped with Momordica types. Molecular analysis also confirmed that these new Brazilian sources of resistance differ from those previously reported, constituting interesting materials to encourage genetic breeding programmes, especially in Brazil and Spain.

Biotechnology for Conservation and Utilization of Agricultural Plant Genetic Resources in Nepal

Agricultural biodiversity is the basis of human life and food security. Nepal with 577 cultivated species possesses huge diversity at varietal as well as landrace levels. In most agricultural crops the rapid genetic erosion due to several reasons is a common phenomenon. Thus, considering the importance of agricultural biodiversity declared by Convention on Biological Diversity for sustainable food production, National Agriculture Genetic Resources Center (NAGRC) has been established for conservation and sustainable utilization of agricultural biodiversity. This paper thus delineates the application of biotechnological tools adopted by NAGRC for effective and efficient conservation and use of agricultural plant genetic resources (APGRs). Among the adopted technologies, tissue bank using shoot tip culture of vegetatively propagating and recalcitrant crops eg potato, sugarcane, banana, sweet potato, etc are in function. Under the molecular marker technology, currently random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers have been used for developing DNA profiles, identifying duplicates in the collections, assessing genetic diversity and screening accessions against economic traits. DNA bank has also been created for storing DNA of indigenous crops and these DNA can be accessed for research and study. Genotypic database has been developed for chayote, finger millet, wheat and maize for identification and selection of the accessions.Journal of Nepal Agricultural Research Council Vol.3 2017: 49-59

Feeding the Household, Growing the Business, or Just Showing Off? Farmers' Motivations for Crop Diversity Choices in Papua New Guinea

Understanding farmers' reasons for growing diverse crop portfolios is essential for supporting the conservation of agricultural biodiversity to foster social-ecological resilience and conserve crop genetic resources. In this paper, Q methodology is applied to examine the motivations for growing diverse crops among semi-subsistence rural farmers in Papua New Guinea. Various types of farmers are identified including so-called ‘marketer-consumers,’ who are highly motivated by crop sale, and ‘exhibitionists,’ who prioritize the ‘show’ values of crops. This approach can be applied to better target programs seeking to conserve crop diversity and promote new crop varieties in regions undergoing rapid transformation.

The social psychology of biodiversity conservation in agriculture

We investigate farmers’ intentions to apply biodiversity conservation practices from a psychological perspective, using an adapted version of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), including group norms and putting emphasis on moral norms and self-identity. The study is based on a quantitative survey (n = 99) in Belgium, analysed using confirmatory factor analyses and path analysis. Results suggest that the impact of attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioural control on intentions is almost fully mediated through moral norms and self-identity. To have a sustained impact, change actions should strive to embed biodiversity conservation into the social norms and into the good farmer identity of the farming community. While acknowledging the explanatory nature of this study, the findings could suggest another view on how to induce behavioural change.

To integrate or to segregate food crop and energy crop cultivation at the landscape scale? Perspectives on biodiversity conservation in agriculture in Europe

Biodiversity is severely declining in intensively managed agriculture worldwide. In response, land-management strategies for biodiversity conservation on farmland are in debate, namely ecological intensification and land sparing vs. land sharing. In parallel, there is a recent food vs. energy debate stimulated by an increasing competition for land resources. Despite clear overlaps between these two debates, they were rarely connected in previous research. This paper aims to stimulate a discussion by providing a contextual link between biodiversity conservation strategies and options for future energy crop deployment. Therefore, nine conceptual land-use scenarios are developed, and then, the potential biodiversity implications are discussed based on the findings from past and ongoing research. These scenarios include the integration and segregation of both food and energy crops on lands with a range of productivity and suitability for agricultural production. We assume that the clear segregation between food crops on productive land and energy crops on marginal land is less likely to be a solution of mitigating the problems related to the biodiversity decline, especially in the European agricultural landscape context. In contrast, the integration of food and energy crop production systems at the farm to landscape scale has greater potential for ecological intensification, although conflicts with traditional nature conservation targets may arise. We conclude that broadening the perspectives of biodiversity conservation in agriculture is crucial, and the inclusion of energy crop production into the recent debates on biodiversity conservation strategies is helpful.

CAP payments and spatial diversity in cereal crops: An analysis of Italian farms

Agricultural biodiversity conservation has been recognized as a fundamental resource for the maintenance of ecological and economic functions. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has an impact on crop diversity decisions of farm managers. In so doing, we allow the diversity decision to depend on a rich set of economic and agro-ecological variables, such as prices of the most common cereal varieties, and agro-ecological and socio-economic characteristics at farm and regional level. Using a panel dataset over the period 2004–2010, we compare the results obtained from pooled-OLS and dynamic panel GMM estimators. The empirical analysis shows the existence of a positive relationship between CAP payments and diversity. In addition, decoupling subsidies from production seems to have a positive effect on biodiversity.

Integrated Seed Sector Development (ISSD)-How Informal and Formal Seed Systems Can Work Together for the Conservation and Use of Agricultural Biodiversity

Agricultural biodiversity conservation and its availability for use are central to robust seed systems that support food security, poverty eradication and resilience to climate change. Recognising that smallholder farmers source seed of different qualities from a diversity of seed systems has resulted in the Integrated Seed Sector Development (ISSD) approach that supports the development of a pluralistic seed sector, which provides smallholder farmers with quality seed of the varieties they desire. The focus of the ISSD approach on the importance of different seed sources to cater for the diversity in demand by farmers offers also opportunities for better and more balanced support for both in situ and ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources, and strengthened use of agricultural biodiversity on farmers’ fields and in both community and commercial seed development programmes.

Free seeds and food sovereignty: anthropology and grassroots agrobiodiversity conservation strategies in the US South

Neoliberal economic frameworks threaten the ability of marginalized people worldwide to grow, harvest, and access sufficient healthy food because they deny traditional collective seed ownership and preclude subsistence as a viable livelihood. Many internationally-oriented counter-responses work to reframe intellectual property law in favor of traditional farmers. In the United States, various grassroots agricultural biodiversity conservation projects designed to re-establish the control of open-pollinated seeds within communities have emerged with similar intent. This article situates and explores the role of open-pollinated seeds and agricultural biodiversity conservation strategies in local food sovereignty. The authors direct applied research projects that collaboratively document and disseminate open-pollinated seed varieties throughout the Southeastern United States with a specific focus on the Ozark Highlands and Appalachian Mountains. The research methods represent an activist anthropology—participant observation and ethnographic interviewing while collaboratively growing and sharing seed varieties with local farmers, gardeners, seed-savers, and activists—with the explicit purpose of forging more sustainable, integrated, and sovereign local food systems.Keywords: agricultural anthropology, agrobiodiversity, grassroots strategies, in situ conservation, seed saving

Seed exchange networks and food system resilience in the United States

Seed exchange is a multidimensional issue with social, political, economic, and agricultural implications. There is a growing concern about the increase of the food system’s vulnerability as a result of loss of agricultural biodiversity. Farmers’ ability to replant, exchange, and distribute saved seed is a way to minimize their dependence on commercial suppliers and thereby maintain control over farming practices. Seed saving is also crucial for conservation because the process of choosing, replanting, and exchanging seeds relies on and increases diversity on the farm and in communities. Seed exchange networks, formal and informal ways that farmers engage alongside institutional plant breeding systems, help to conserve agricultural, social, and cultural diversity and identity as well as enhance resilience against environmental and economic shocks. However, how to build resilient seed systems and move from the innovative but relatively isolated project activities of professionals and farmers to a situation where such approaches are scaled up and networked alongside formal and informal, national and international plant breeding mechanism are a concern. This paper examines grassroots seed exchange through seed libraries, the marketing of new varieties through seed companies, and hybrid civil society-business models to understand their financial and technical abilities as well as challenges they face. Seed exchange networks fulfill an important role in conservation of agricultural biodiversity and building community resilience through their work on breeding, exchange, and propagation of regionally adapted open-pollinated seeds as well as advocacy on seed sovereignty and education on seed saving.

What role for cooperation in conservation tenders? Paying farmer groups in the High Andes

This paper sheds light on the potential of group-level tenders to enhance conservation where it depends on cooperation of small-scale farmers. We analyze data from two pilot payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes focused on the conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. Contracts were assigned to farming groups who could choose between different types of in-kind payments with varying degrees of divisibility between group members. Our main results indicate that: (1) stronger general patterns of collective action are positively related to the level of cooperation in group-bid making; (2) where collective action is robust, collective payments seem to provide stronger conservation incentives than individual payments; (3) collective payments could mitigate some potential rent-seeking behavior; (4) selecting bid offers based on both a ‘cooperation’ criterion and conservation land area offered does not overly compromise the cost-effectiveness of PES; and (5) group-level contracts may create strong incentives for contract compliance. Hence, combining farmer group-level contracts with collective in-kind payments can enhance the cost-effectiveness of conservation tenders, while generating co-benefits in terms of increased interaction and social capital among group members.

Education, attitudes and agricultural biodiversity: an application of randomised control method

The study1 attempts to investigate the role of education and environmental concerns in conserving ‘agricultural biodiversity’ of diverse farming systems in Sri Lanka. It analyses how farmers’ valuation of agricultural biodiversity alters with education on agricultural biodiversity and environmental concerns. The Choice Experiment (CE) Method, combined with Randomized Control Method (RCM) was used to collect data, while models such as Conditional Logit (CL) and Random Parameter (RP) Logit were used to analyse the collected data. The results clearly illustrate that farmers’ education level, as well as environmental concerns play a major role in the conservation of agricultural biodiversity. The overall findings of this study will help the policy makers to implement relevant policies in reducing degradation of agricultural biodiversity, which is increasingly posing a major impediment to agricultural growth, to the environmental protection and sustainable development.

English

Three major physical resources in the world comprise land, water and the biological diversity. Agricultural biodiversity is an important component of biodiversity, which has a more direct link to the well being and livelihood of mankind than other forms of bio¬diversity. In fact, it is one of our most fundamental and essential resources, one that has enabled farming systems to evolve since the birth of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Food plant and animal species have been collected, used, domesticated and improved through traditional sys¬tems of selection over many generations. The resulting diversity of genetic resources developed by early farmers now forms the basis on which modern high yielding and disease resistant varieties have been produced to feed the growing human population, expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), “agricultural biodiversity in¬cludes all components of biological diversity of relevance to food and agriculture, and all components of biological biodiversity that constitute agro-ecosystems: the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms, at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, which are neces¬sary to sustain key functions of the agricultural ecosystem, its structure and processes”. The effective conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity is very important in ensuring sustainable increases in the productivity and produc¬tion of healthy food by and for mankind as well as contrib¬uting to increased resilience of agricultural ecosystems. Key words: Agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), domestication, human population, variability.

Biodiversity conservation in agriculture requires a multi-scale approach.

Biodiversity loss--one of the most prominent forms of modern environmental change--has been heavily driven by terrestrial habitat loss and, in particular, the spread and intensification of agriculture. Expanding agricultural land-use has led to the search for strong conservation strategies, with some suggesting that biodiversity conservation in agriculture is best maximized by reducing local management intensity, such as fertilizer and pesticide application. Others highlight the importance of landscape-level approaches that incorporate natural or semi-natural areas in landscapes surrounding farms. Here, we show that both of these practices are valuable to the conservation of biodiversity, and that either local or landscape factors can be most crucial to conservation planning depending on which types of organisms one wishes to save. We performed a quantitative review of 266 observations taken from 31 studies that compared the impacts of localized (within farm) management strategies and landscape complexity (around farms) on the richness and abundance of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate species in agro-ecosystems. While both factors significantly impacted species richness, the richness of sessile plants increased with less-intensive local management, but did not significantly respond to landscape complexity. By contrast, the richness of mobile vertebrates increased with landscape complexity, but did not significantly increase with less-intensive local management. Invertebrate richness and abundance responded to both factors. Our analyses point to clear differences in how various groups of organisms respond to differing scales of management, and suggest that preservation of multiple taxonomic groups will require multiple scales of conservation.