Approaches and constraints of using existing landrace material to understand agricultural spread in prehistory
What are landraces?
A formal definition of a landrace is a “dynamic population or populations of a cultivated plant that has historical origin, distinct identity and lacks formal crop improvement, as well as often being genetically diverse, locally adapted and associated with traditional farming systems” (Camacho Villa et al., 2005).
In simple terms, landraces are grown from seed that has not been systematically selected and marketed by seed companies or developed by plant breeders. A significant proportion of the world’s farmers grow landraces. We have been studying the spread of cereal agriculture into Europe, a region where landraces have largely fallen out of use. European cereal landraces were grown by our ancestors before the work of the 19th century seed improvers and the 20th century plant breeders produced improved varieties. The terms ‘landrace’ and ‘traditional variety’ are sometimes used interchangeably.
Do European cereal landraces still exist?
Some cereal landraces have survived in Europe having been handed on from one generation of farmers to the next. Elsewhere, landraces and traditional varieties have been revived by enthusiasts who seek to preserve our agricultural and food heritage. Landraces and traditional varieties are valued as the source of ingredients in traditional food http://www.slowfood.com/ (LINK) and traditional beer or as raw materials for thatching.
There have been systematic efforts to preserve European cereal landraces either in germplasm collections or in situ. The activities of these collections are coordinated by the Biodiversity International http://www.bioversityinternational.org/ (LINK). Biodiversity International coordinates information on conservation activities, including a searchable online database of germplasm collections.
NIAB has collected information on the European landrace accessions for barley and emmer wheat held in germplasm collections (seed banks). All of these accessions are available for study. See Table 1.
Are all European cereal landraces represented in these collections?
The economic benefits from growing the new improved varieties were such that landrace cultivation had virtually disappeared from central and north-western Europe by the early decades of the 20th century (Bonjean and Angus, 2000). Landraces from many of these areas have been lost. Unfortunately, no systematic collections were made during the time before they disappeared. In those areas of Europe that did not industrialise as early or to the same extent or in these remote or agriculturally marginal regions, landraces survived into the twentieth century. Landraces from Iberia, the Balkans, large parts of European Russia and from mountainous regions are better represented in germplasm collections. The efforts of collectors such as N. I. Vavilov were crucial in preventing the extinction of many of these local ecotypes. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Collection sites for barley (Hordeum vulgare) landrace accessions with co-ordinate data supplied by germplasm collections or where collection site and accession names have enabled co-ordinates to be assigned by cross referencing to geographical databases. The germplasm collection supplying the accessions is indicated; the abbreviations for germplasm collection identity are explained in Table 1.
NB. The coverage of European Russia provided by accessions available from the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Plant Industry is very extensive but they have been omitted from this map for clarity.
| Institutions with viable germplasm collections | Number of H. vulgare landraces |
Number of T. dicoccum landraces |
| Albania | ||
| Plant Breeding/ Seed Production Section Dep. of Agronomy, Agricultural University, Tiranë http://www.ubt.edu.al/aut.htm |
25 | |
| Austria | ||
| Austrian Agency of Health and Foodsafety / Lwvie - Institute of Agroecology, Vienna http://www.ages.at/ |
28 | |
| Belgium | ||
| Center for Applied Biology, Linter-Neerhespen | 9 | |
| Cyprus | ||
| National (CYPARI) Genebank Agricultural Research Institute, Nicosia http://www.ari.gov.cy/ |
26 | |
| Czech Republic | ||
| Genebank Department Research Institute of Crop Production (RICP), Prague http://genbank.vurv.cz/genetic/resources/ |
25 | 76 (43) |
| Agricultural Research Institute Kromeriz, Co. Ltd. Kromeriz |
47 (24) |
|
| France | ||
| Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (1) Clermont-Ferrand www.inra.fr |
3,700 | |
| Stat. de Genetique et Amelioration des Plantes (1) INRA C.R. Montpellier (INRA) www.ensam.inra.fr |
1,400 | |
| Georgia | ||
| Protection Society of Agrobiodiversity DIKA, Tbilisi www.itic.org.ge/dika/eng.htm |
25 | 5 |
| Germany | ||
| Institut fuer Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzen-forschung (IPK), Gatersleben www.ipk-gatersleben.de |
3,198 (607) |
137 (67) |
| Federal Centre for Breeding Research on Cultivated Plants (BAZ), Braunschweig www.bafz.de |
3,198 (607) |
137 (67) |
| Greece | ||
| Greek Genebank Agricultural Research Center of Makedonia and Thraki, NAGREF Thessaloniki http://www.nagref.gr/ |
99 | |
| Hungary | ||
| Institute for Agrobotany Tápiószele (RCAT) http://www.rcat.hu/ |
14 | |
| Italy | ||
| Istituto Sperimentale per la Cerealicoltura Sezione di Fiorenzuola d'Arda1, Fiorenzuola d'Arda (PC) www.cerealicoltura.it |
600 | |
| Dip. di Biologia Veg. e Biotecnologie Agroambientali e Zootecniche, Università di Perugia, Perugia http://www.agr.unipg.it/dbvba/ |
5 | |
| Lithuania | ||
| Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture Kedainiai raj. www.lzi.lt |
1 | |
| Netherlands | ||
| Centre for Genetic Resources (CGN) Wageningen www.cgn.wur.nl |
1,724 (55) |
|
| Norway | ||
| Safety Base Collection of NGB Svalbard (NGB) http://www.nordgen.org/ngb/ |
401 (271) |
|
| Plante forsk Holt Tromso www.planteforsk.no |
1 | |
| Portugal | ||
| Banco Português de Germoplasma Vegetal (BPGV) Braga |
42 | |
| Romania | ||
| Research Institute for Cereals and Technical Plants Fundulea, Calarasi http://www.ricic.ro/informatii_en.htm |
7 | 8 (1) |
| Agricultural Research Station Suceava |
2 | 5 |
| Banca de Resurse Genetice Vegetale Suceava Suceava http://www.svgenebank.ro/sections_collecting_ro.htm |
33 | |
| University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Timisoara, Timisoara http://www.univagro-iasi.ro/agricultura/index.php?lang=en&pagina=pagini/home.html |
8 | |
| Russian Federation | ||
| N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Plant Industry, St. Petersburg http://www.vir.nw.ru/ |
4,128 (1,840) |
463 (170) |
| Slovakia | ||
| Slovakia Research Institute of Plant Production Piestany |
50 (28) |
|
| Spain | ||
| Centro de Recursos Fitogeneticos INIA (1), Madrid http://www.inia.es/ |
1,828 | |
| Centre UdL, IRTA (1) Lleida (IRTA) |
950 | |
| Compania Espanola de Cultivos Oleaginosos S.A. (CECOSA), Madrid |
20 | |
| Grupo Cruzcampo S.A. Dirección de Servicios Agrícolas Sevilla |
166 | |
| Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Zaragoza http://www.dicar.csic.es/del/ |
99 | |
| Sweden | ||
| Nordic Gene Bank, Alnarp http://www.ngb.se/ |
411 (278) |
|
| Switzerland | ||
| Agroscope RAC Changins, Nyon (RAC) http://www.racchangins.ch/ |
791 | 58 |
| Schweizer Bergheimat, Lucerne http://www.schweizer-bergheimat.ch/ |
36 | 5 |
| Syrian Arab Republic | ||
| Int. Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Aleppo http://www.icarda.cgiar.org/ |
16,866 (3,351) |
|
| Ukraine | ||
| Institute of Plant Production n.a. V.J. Yurjev of UAAS Kharkiv |
350 (253) |
|
| United Kingdom | ||
| John Innes Centre, Norwich (JIC) http://www.jic.bbsrc.ac.uk/ |
4,453 | |
| Welsh Plant Breeding Station Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research Ceredigion http://www.iger.bbsrc.ac.uk/ |
1 | |
| Scottish Agricultural Science Agency, Edinburgh http://www.sasa.gov.uk/ |
1 | |
| United States of America | ||
| Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, Univ. of California, Riverside http://www.plantbiology.ucr.edu/ |
431 (102) |
|
| National Small Grains Germplasm Research Facility, USDA-ARS, Aberdeen, Idaho (NSGC) http://www.ars-grin.gov/ars/PacWest/Aberdeen/ |
13,057 (2,307) |
Table 1: Significant genebank repositories of European barley (Hordeum vulgare) and emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum) landraces as listed by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) Directory of Germplasm Collections. Emmer is also known in databases as T. dicoccum, T. dicoccon or T. diccocom. Institutions that do not hold European material are omitted. Where the information is available, holdings of European landraces are shown in brackets. Web addresses are shown where available.
(1) - IPGRI listing does not give details on whether accessions are wild, weedy, landraces, traditional varieties, elite cultivars or breeders lines
Reference:
Bonjean AP and Angus WJ (2000) The World Wheat Book: A History of Wheat Breeding. Paris, Lavoisier Publishing.
Acknowledgements: This work is funded by a Natural Environment Research Council consortium grant entitled ‘The Domestication of Europe’ (NER/O/S/2003/00708D), by a McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Fellowship and by NIAB. We would like to thank the curators of all of the collections mentioned in this paper for their invaluable assistance in providing information and cereal material. We also thank Prof. T.A. Brown, the project co-ordinator (University of Manchester) and other members of the Domestication of Europe Consortium for helpful advice.