Ethnobotany in the Andes and the Amazon in a world of Nagoya Protocol and post SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Plants provide humankind with our most basic resources — food, medicines, fiber, and a whole array of other useful products. Relatives of wild crops and traditional plant varieties have been the foundation of crop domestication, plant breeding, and indeed the whole of modern agriculture. Plants provide the molecular basis of many pharmaceuticals, as direct compounds or as molecular blueprints. Modern science has started to confirm that the distinction between nutrition and medicine is blurred. With economic development empowering a greater percentage of the world’s people, urban areas continuing to expand, and human populations projected to double in the next 50 years, it seems certain that natural resources will face increasing threat. Habitat loss, unsustainable extraction of plants, spread of invasive species, climate change, and other human activities will have tremendous impacts. In this overview, we assess the changes in ethnobotanical research in the Andes and Amazon in the last decades using the Chábobo Ethnobotany Project as an example for modern ethnobotanical research under Convention on Biological Diversity and the attached Nagoya Protocol, and reflect on the possibilities of using this model for future ethnobotanical studies in a post-SARS-CoV-2 world.

Crop Domestication, Root Trait Syndromes, and Soil Nutrient Acquisition in Organic Agroecosystems: A Systematic Review

Selecting crops that express certain reproductive, leaf, and root traits has formed detectable, albeit diverse, crop domestication syndromes. However, scientific and informal on-farm research has primarily focused on understanding and managing linkages between only certain domestication traits and yield. There is strong evidence suggesting that functional traits can be used to hypothesize and detect trade-offs, constraints, and synergies among crop yield and other aspects of crop biology and agroecosystem function. Comparisons in the functional traits of crops vs. wild plants has emerged as a critical avenue that has helped inform a better understanding of how plant domestication has reshaped relationships among yield and traits. For instance, recent research has shown domestication has led important economic crops to express extreme functional trait values among plants globally, with potentially major implications for yield stability, nutrient acquisition strategies, and the success of ecological nutrient management. Here, we present an evidence synthesis of domestication effects on crop root functional traits, and their hypothesized impact on nutrient acquisition strategies in organic and low input agroecosystems. Drawing on global trait databases and published datasets, we show detectable shifts in root trait strategies with domestication. Relationships between domestication syndromes in root traits and nutrient acquisition strategies in low input systems underscores the need for a shift in breeding paradigms for organic agriculture. This is increasingly important given efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets of Zero Hunger via resilient agriculture practices such as ecological nutrient management and maintenance of genetic diversity.

Advances in Genomics Approaches Shed Light on Crop Domestication

Crop domestication occurred ~10,000–12,000 years ago when humans shifted from a hunter–gatherer to an agrarian society. Crops were domesticated by selecting the traits in wild plant species that were suitable for human use. Research is crucial to elucidate the mechanisms and processes involved in modern crop improvement and breeding. Recent advances in genomics have revolutionized our understanding of crop domestication. In this review, we summarized cutting-edge crop domestication research by presenting its (1) methodologies, (2) current status, (3) applications, and (4) perspectives. Advanced genomics approaches have clarified crop domestication processes and mechanisms, and supported crop improvement.

Spatial and temporal pattern of rice domestication during the early Holocene in the lower Yangtze region, China

Rice is among the world’s most important and ancient domesticated crops. However, the spatial and temporal pattern of the early rice domestication process remains unclear due to the lack of systematic study of wild/domesticated rice remains and corresponding dates during the early Holocene. Here, we collected 248 samples from five typical Shangshan cultural sites in the lower Yangtze region where is the most likely origin place of rice for phytolith analysis. The results showed the following. (1) Rice bulliform phytoliths from the five sites all present domestication traits, suggesting that the rice domestication process had begun across the region by the early stage of the Holocene. (2) The relative domestication rates reflected by the rice bulliform phytoliths were different between sites, the sites with higher domestication rates were distributed closer to the mainstream river. (3) The rice domestication process revealed by bulliform phytoliths can be divided into three periods during the early Holocene: from 10 to 9 ka, rice domestication began and stayed at a low level under 35%; from 9 to 8.5 ka, rice domestication level increased to 50%; and from 8.5 to 8 ka, rice domestication level was in a fluctuating state. (4) By 9 ka BP, rice double-peaked phytoliths from glume cells are present in most of the studied sites, which imply the presence of crop dehusking processing. This study reconstructed the spatial and temporal patterns of rice domestication during the early Holocene, which will improve our knowledge of early crop domestication and enhance our understanding of changes in rice status.

Genome-Wide Analysis Identified a Set of Conserved lncRNAs Associated with Domestication-Related Traits in Rice

Crop domestication, which gives rise to a number of desirable agronomic traits, represents a typical model system of plant evolution. Numerous genomic evidence has proven that noncoding RNAs such as microRNAs and phasiRNAs, as well as protein-coding genes, are selected during crop domestication. However, limited data shows plant long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are also involved in this biological process. In this study, we performed strand-specific RNA sequencing of cultivated rice Oryza sativa ssp. japonica and O. sativa ssp. indica, and their wild progenitor O. rufipogon. We identified a total of 8528 lncRNAs, including 4072 lncRNAs in O. rufipogon, 2091 lncRNAs in japonica rice, and 2365 lncRNAs in indica rice. The lncRNAs expressed in wild rice were revealed to be shorter in length and had fewer exon numbers when compared with lncRNAs from cultivated rice. We also identified a number of conserved lncRNAs in the wild and cultivated rice. The functional study demonstrated that several of these conserved lncRNAs are associated with domestication-related traits in rice. Our findings revealed the feature and conservation of lncRNAs during rice domestication and will further promote functional studies of lncRNAs in rice.