Traditional farmers in the Thai hills are still growing rice the old fashioned way, and they may be single-handedly preserving the crop’s genetic diversity in the process.
Domesticated rice varieties have been selected for their high yield, and though they are necessary in order to feed the world’s growing population, they are genetically static. But a new study demonstrates that the traditional farming methods still practiced in remote areas of Thailand are preserving ancestral varieties of rice by keeping them genetically dynamic.
The Karen people in the Thai hills are still doing agriculture the same way it’s been done for centuries, and their intimate connection with the crop is something that’s been lost by modern agriculture. Expert Karen farmers play a vital role in maintaining their crop’s genetic diversity by exchanging and choosing seeds to plant the following year. They take into consideration a multitude of factors which vary annually, including soil type, elevation, and temperature.
“It’s interesting to see how the expert farmers interact with the plants. For example, there was a purple mutation that occurred in one of the expert farmer’s fields. He was very curious about it. He took the seeds and grew it off in a corner because he wanted to see what it looked like and tasted like. That’s probably how humans domesticated plants, smart people were making smart choices in what to plant and grow,” said researcher Barbara A. Schaal.
Schaal and her colleagues studied the genetic diversity in a landrace of rice grown by the Karen people and discovered that it fit a model which also explains how genetic variation is preserved in a native plant species. In other words, the Karen are acting much as nature might, protecting their crop year to year as conditions may change.
In contrast to the practices of the Karen, many crops grown today have been genetically optimized to consistently give a large yield. Seeds are purchased from a supplier and the plants are all genetically similar.
Preserving genetic diversity is important because it allows for the plant to adapt to varying conditions. In a world with a rapidly changing climate, losing that genetic diversity could spell disaster. There are some efforts in the United States to preserve the genetic diversity of crops like corn– landraces of corn and other crops are often kept in seed banks.
But preserving those seeds in banks may be futile if we lose touch with how to farm them. Ultimately, preserving cultural diversity may be as essential as preserving genetic diversity.
Source: Physorg
Image Credit: echiner1 on Flickr under a CC License
About Bryan Nelson
