Jacob tackles tipping points:
I think that an explosion of local varieties, for instance, could count as variance amplification. An increase in variety names could be due to a fragmented knowledge system with lots of redundancies (the same variety having different names in different places) as farmers fail to trace each variety. At a given moment, the names become meaningless. This can then lead to genetic erosion, as farmers fail to find certain varieties due to the name confusion. Less common varieties that survive by going from hand to hand will be the first to go extinct. Has anyone observed this?
Well, has anyone observed this? Read the full comment, there’s also stuff in there about why a locally-based “genetic erosion monitoring portal” wouldn’t be much use.