Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics

One Reply to “Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics”

  1. Maize in Mexico: This is an odd paper. It claims: `… it is likely that different alleles are being favoured by different selection pressures’. That is, it supposes `ongoing maize domestication’ but provides no actual measure of it. It also says: `… evolution under domestication continues to occur in other crops in other countries…’ but gives no references to support this. The fact that campesino varieties are being lost – that is what genetic erosion is all about – seems to suggest that `ongoing domestication’ is not happening fast enough, that is, we have backwards evolution on farm, with local variation and selection pressure not being enough to maintain varieties over the longer term. In contrast, institutional plant breeding does have enough variation (from genebanks) and can exert enough selection pressure (through screening) to surpass in a measurable way the efforts of farmers.

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