Doctoral Dissertation Research: Conceptualizing Crop Domestication and Diversification

Tulane University, New Orleans LA

Investigators

Abstract

In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that in the last century alone, ~75% of global plant genetic resources have been lost. Moreover, while the FAO estimates that global food production demands will rise 60% by 2050, they also predict that plant genetic resources for crop improvement will shrink by a third. In the face of such endangered food security, the United States, like many countries, must strive to breed, domesticate, and conserve crop genetic resources to help satisfy such increased agricultural demands. The evolutionary relatives and progenitors of domesticated crops (i.e., crop wild relatives) play invaluable roles in plant domestication and diversification, often acting as sources of valuable traits (e.g., pest resistance, increased nutrition, drought tolerance, increased yield) or as potential domesticates themselves. Importantly, crop and crop wild relative diversity have historically and contemporarily been modified by indigenous peoples, who play key roles in crop domestication and diversification through their conscious and unconscious forms of environmental modification. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the data produced by this study will facilitate the growing number of participatory crop breeding, domestication, and conservation projects in the United States and abroad, which depend upon effective cross-communication between indigenous farmers and researchers. John White, under the supervision of Dr. William Balee of Tulane University, will explore the relationship between indigenous practices and perspectives concerning domestication and diversification, and collaborative crop domestication, conservation, and diversification projects. The project will take place among Amazonian Runa, a self-designation of a cultural group in Ecuador known as the Amazonian Quechua or Kichwa. Many indigenous territories (e.g., that of the Runa in the Ecuadorian Amazon) overlap with major global biodiversity hotspots for crop genetic resources. However, despite widespread indigenous involvement in crop domestication and diversification, and the growing number of conservationists and plant breeders working with indigenous peoples in hotspots of crop genetic diversity, indigenous knowledge and practices concerning domestication and diversification remain critically understudied. Specifically, this research consists of one year of ethnographic study composed of daily participant observation and semi-structured interviewing. The data resulting from this investigation will contribute to environmental anthropological theory by illustrating: (1) how indigenous peoples conceptualize and modulate critical biological processes (e.g., domestication and diversification); and (2) how and why the form, function, and value of environmental modifications, like plant domestication and diversification, can change within and across sociocultural contexts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.