Cereal landraces for sustainable agriculture : a review

Abstract

They also have the potential to improve mineral content, particularly iron and zinc, if these traits can be uccessfully transferred to improved varieties. (7) Landraces have been shown to be valuable sources of resistance to pathogens and there is more to be gained from such sources. There is also potential, largely unrealised, for disease tolerance and resistance or tolerance of pest and various abiotic stresses too including to toxic environments. (8) Single gene traits are generally easily transferred from landrace germplasm to modern cultivars, but most of the desirable traits characteristic of landraces are complex and difficult to express in different genetic backgrounds. Maintaining these characteristics in heterogeneous landraces is also problematic. Breeding, selection and deployment methods appropriate to these objectives should be used rather than those used for high input intensive agriculture plant breeding. (9) Participatory plant breeding and variety selection has proven more successful than the approach used in high input breeding programmes for landrace improvement in stress-prone environments where sustainable approaches are a high priority. Despite being more complex to carry out, it not only delivers improved germplasm, but also aids uptake and communication between farmers, researchers and advisors for the benefit of all. (10) Previous seed trade legislation was designed primarily to protect trade and return royalty income to modern plant breeders with expensive programmes to fund. As the desirability of using landraces becomes more apparent to achieve greater sustainability, legislation changes are being made to facilitate this trade too. However, more changes are needed to promote the exploitation of diversity in landraces and encourage their use.

Keywords

diversity; disease; yield; quality; nutrition; breeding; genotyping; competition; cultivar degeneration; whole-plant field phenotyping; non-stop selection; adaptive variation

Published in

Agronomy for Sustainable Development
2010, volume: 30, number: 2, pages: 237-269
Publisher: SPRINGER FRANCE

SLU Authors

• Larsson, Hans

  • Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG2 Zero hunger
SDG12 Responsible consumption and production
SDG13 Climate action

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/agro/2009032

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/48192