Breeding New Fruit Tree Landraces

[Justin]

@a_Vivaldi

I’m pretty sure the way you defined it was “the population is relatively reliably delicious, and relatively fit. There could still be plenty of phenotypic diversity outside of those parameters.” I quoted the place where you described your envisioned landrace because that’s where you described what you call a landrace.

There’s a big difference in defining the aims of a new landrace project, and defining the term ‘landrace’. I was not defining the term ‘landrace’. But yes even traditional landraces can have phenotypic variation, as I have explained.

@a_Vivaldi

Sure, to an extent, but, well, I’m pretty comfortable with being loose with words and using the broadest sense of a word if needed (and have actually had some pretty extensive arguments with Richard on that point), but even I think you’re being sloppy with what you mean by “landrace.”

I’m glad you agree that it is a spectrum. Also please notice there is a difference in a population which is in the creation process of becoming a landrace, and an actual landrace. So you can still start with a hybrid swarm, which is not yet a landrace, then make it very well adapted to a specific location in which it is being grown, and with some degree of phenotypic homogeneity of the produce (which might not include leaf phenotype for example, if the leaf is not the product). At that point it can still have a lot of genetic variation, and if someone wants to say it’s not a landrace because the produce is not on the right part of the spectrum that they have chosen to draw the conceptual line at, then that’s fine, I don’t mind if they call it something else. But it would still be a population adapted to the land in which it is being grown, while containing genetic diversity within the population, and that much is completely applicable to the landrace concept.

@a_Vivaldi

@Justin

I don’t mean to be rude but your thinking seems very black and white. As if you can only imagine 1 possible way, and want to deny any other possibility.

I think you’re misinterpreting me here. The reason why I wouldn’t be in favor of trying the landrace/OP approach is because it is wildly inefficient and far more likely to fail.

Well I’m glad I was misinterpreting you. I mean, I’m glad to know I was wrong about that. Also, I personally don’t think that the conclusion you just made is sufficient. Specifically because, to use a fruit analogy, we are not comparing apples with apples By which I mean, you are comparing two different methods which have two different end points. For your aim, that method might be more efficient. But if ones aim would be to create a sustainable OP variety propagated by seed, perhaps the landrace method I have described would be more efficient.

@a_Vivaldi

The example of Auburn university is meant to show how hard this is. Decades of work at Auburn were only kinda successful, and before that 300 years of settlers and colonists brining in varieties and landraces from all over the place was an absolute failure.

Well I did give you an example of very successful plum landracing in unusually difficult circumstances, done by immigrants. And that’s without using the accelerated specific method I have been advocating for here, which should be far faster. So I would suggest not to write it off as a general method that can be effective.

@a_Vivaldi

I gave you a very detailed explanation of the mechanisms when I talked about citrus breeding. The same or similar problems exist for all fruits, to one degree or other.

And I gave you not only recent examples from annuals, but also the relatively recent plum tree landrace example which didn’t even use these more efficient methods I have described. Now I’m not saying ‘this method will work fast with every species everywhere’. But I am saying what I’m saying.

@a_Vivaldi

Sounds idealistic at best.

There are many collaborative breeding project, including landrace projects. So this is not mere theory. But sure, a bit of idealism can help. Hard work can be lubricated with hope and joy.

@a_Vivaldi

Again, that’s not what I meant. Open pollination is a cudgel because while it makes doing crosses easier (no need to sterilize flowers, meticulously hand pollinate, bag, freeze pollen, embryo rescue, etc) and even feels good (“just let nature do it”) it makes breeding harder (you have no idea what the parents are, you can’t select, recessive traits are invisible unless expressed, rarer traits will get lost). If you put in a bunch of hard work collecting a ton of unique genetics, OP will wipe out most of that in a few generations.

It’s a different approach. It’s harder if you are trying to use the method which this is not. It’s hard to play the guitar while you are holding a violin.

@a_Vivaldi

From thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years of OP. Thank heavens we’ve found better ways of breeding.

Some just hundreds, I would say. Some less I’d also say, depending on the species. And, I would include the method I have been detailing as one such ‘better way of breeding’ - much faster way to create new landraces than normal.

@a_Vivaldi

Now consider this: in a few decades of modern breeding, we’ve created Nikita’s gift and Dar Sofievsky Persimmons, Sharafuga fruit, cotton candy grapes, Southern highbush blueberries, primocane fruiting blackberries that can be grown in the tropics, sun gold tomatoes, KSU pawpaws, the most productive strains of every major cereal crop, ruby grapefruit, LSU figs, finger limes, golden rice, etc, etc. Imagine how much cool fruits and vegetables we’d have if people knew how to breed more efficiently 500 years ago.

We have also got some great new landraces, and some great new populations heading to becoming landraces, from modern methods like the one I have been describing, which is quite different that the one you are advocating for.

Also just to take your cereals statement - we have so many grains which have been bred by modern methods, which have devastated traditional cultures and economies. And bankrupt so many farmers that India has been experiencing an epidemic of farmer suicides. Furthermore such seeds tend to be more prone to climate extremes so that has caused severe issues with crop failures. Not to mention the designed reliance on toxic chemicals and other pollutants. And then we have for example the millions of dollars invested into breeding the new patented GMO rice variety claiming ‘the highest levels’ of iron, and massively promoted by the WHO so that so much land is taken over by such seeds instead of local landraces, when in fact that expensive maladapted patented rice is up to 20 times less than traditional landrace rice varieties in India! That GMO rice is the bottom one in this list, the others are local landraces:

For more details on this and rice landraces in India in general, see:

Meet the Seed Warrior: Dr Debal Deb

Similarly, think about why the evolutionary populations of wheat I mentioned above, do so much better than the expensive modern-bred varieties which plague our fields.

So, the modern mainstream method is not the idealistic picture you paint. It’s really not as black and white as that. And Sun Gold tomatoes are another good example - they make people dependent on the seed corporations, since they are F1. And funnily enough, various people have been working on dehybridising it, which is exactly the kind of democratisation of food growing that I support. Here’s just one example:

Tomato, Sungella (Organic) - Adaptive Seeds

Also notice how most tomatoes sold today have very little taste! All the tastiest tomatoes I have grown or eaten have not been bred by the modern academic methods like using DNA markers and so on. With only 1 exception, which is an F1 I grew to integrate some of its traits into a landrace project. And by the way I am not opposed to using DNA markers to help with breeding. I just know that you can do great breeding without it. I’ve never tasted better tomatoes than the ones from a modern landrace project. And they also grow better in the area that project is run than any commercial or heirloom tomato. And that’s not from decades of breeding even.

I also support the new domestication or other means of making, new varieties of food crop. So long as it does not result in environmental destruction. But I would much prefer if the results are sustainable in terms of people being able to save their own seeds and continue the populations on their own, without having to remain engaged with the capitalist system. Apart from many other reasons I could suggest, one simple fact is that our current civilisation is guaranteed to end. We don’t know when, but we can be sure it will.

@GrapeNut

@Justin

For example one landrace approach is to wait for the 3rd generation to start selecting for flavour, the first 2 letting the environment do the selection.

You do realize that the 3rd generation in a fruit tree can be 20+ years from your starting point, right?

I understand that you are opposed to the idea of a breeding method taking a long time. I also should point out to you that I qualified that by saying “one landrace approach”. And I offered an alternative method which would allow environmental selection in the first year of growing trees from seed. But anyway I know at least 1 person involved in a multigenerational tree landrace project. He’s 3rd generation.

@hobilus

Since the initial discussion centered around Prunus, I thought Id mention an article I read some years back (wish I knew how to find it) about the precolonial Indian plum groves of the eastern seaboard. If I recall correctly, the author postulated based on detailed historical accounts that plums had been domesticated to a high degree and subsequently reverted to a wild unimproved form following the demise of Indian territories and the cultural and and land use practices that had maintained them. Similar cases have been made generically for a bunch of tree crops, but this was a published piece and seemed well founded.

Interesting! Could be a good candidate for re-domesticating! Also there are tomatoes which by some have been labelled ‘Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme’ which some have believed to be wild, but in reality it is highly likely that these smaller fruited tomatoes have resulted from feral populations of domesticated tomatoes. So, sounds quite a similar case. (Also some have just been misidentified S. pimpinellifolium, or crosses between the two species that may have occurred in feral populations).

@hobilus

Many of you are probably familiar with the Soviet era experiments domesticating foxes. After something like 5 or 10 generations, they had foxes that wagged their tails and barked.

Yes, and I heard interestingly that they also developed various coloured fur, like domestic dogs! And I also heard that basically the domestication process was selecting against the change into… well basically adulthood. Kind of like eternal puppies!

@hobilus

Ive heard it said that escaped domestic pigs will grow tusks. Not sure the details, but it seems that there are inflection points to gene expression.

I wonder if that might be due to interbreeding with wild boar.

@hobilus

Thats even more the case with landraces, which are by definition of a place, of a time, and of a people. Its hard to imagine a landrace existing divorced from a community and a set of cultural practices.

The place can be where you live, the time can be years from now, and the community can be your own community. Also, it’s maybe worth realising that in traditional cultures seeds are very often exchanged. Like I mentioned in Laos, the Andes, and Africa (just because I have read more about landraces in those places in particular), where landraces would often be exchanged over distances. But yes the main thing is to make populations adapted to ones specific land and farming methods. For example, you might like to call ‘no dig farming’ a ‘cultural practice’. And one quite different to the more mainstream cultural practices of ploughing, drenching land in fertilisers and pesticides, and so on.

@a_Vivaldi

Had the North American natives not switched over to Central American crops, we couldn’t had even more new crops in the Columbian Exchange.

Was the mass genocide considerably more extensive in North America though? Because that might have meant many more crops disappeared that people today never got to hear about. Not challenging your point, but that might be a factor also.

@a_Vivaldi

And, if I’m being honest, those communities only existed because they had too, life was harder back then, and everyone was poorer, there just wasn’t any other option but live in close knit communities. All around the world it’s the same trend, once people start getting enough money to live well, and productivity improves, those small communities dissolve away.

I’ve observed the opposite trend. Of people being much happier with much less money, and becoming more and more miserable with more ‘economic wealth’. And the levels of inequality in places like the US or UK etc. for example are quite shocking. As well as the severely detrimental effect of lack of community. Especially in cities. But that’s a whole different topic.