UC Davis study reveals troubling loss in Mexico's maize genetic diversity

[Judi Lynn]

UC Davis study reveals troubling loss in Mexico's maize genetic diversity
By Pat Bailey
UC Davis News Service
Created: 09/16/2014 04:49:08 PM PDT

The genetic diversity of maize, or corn, is declining in Mexico, where the world's largest food crop originated, report researchers in Mexico and at UC Davis.

The findings are particularly sobering at a time when agriculturists around the world are looking to the gene pools of staple foods like corn to dramatically increase food production for a global population expected to top 9 billion by 2050.

The new study, which contradicts some earlier and more optimistic assessments of corn diversity in Mexico, appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"For decades, researchers have been trying to ascertain whether crop genetic resources are endangered at their centers of origin," said study co-author J. Edward Taylor, professor of agricultural economics at UCD. "This is a vital question, because genetic diversity is the basic ingredient for crops to respond to environmental threats ranging from pests to climate change."

The erosion of crop genetic resources has been a concern since the 1940s, when serious conservation efforts began. This study — the first to examine changes in maize diversity across Mexico — compares maize diversity estimates from 38 case studies over the past 15 years with data from farmers throughout Mexico.

http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_26546678/uc-davis-study-reveals-troubling-loss-mexicos-maize

(Short article, no more at link.)

[GliderGuider]

1. This happens to all domesticated crops, unfortunately.

Turkeys, potatoes, wheat, bananas, etc. - all victims of the human drive for "improvement" and production efficiency.

[appal_jack]

2. But these past 15 years in Mexico were not just 'normal.'

It's been 22 years since NAFTA was signed. That trade agreement opened-up Mexico to foreign ownership of land, I believe, as well as many other depredations of extractive capitalism. Farmers were driven off their farms, and many became migrant workers in the US. Meanwhile, NAFTA also opened Mexico to dumping of US corn at very low prices.

What a surprise: disenfranchising indigenous farmers from their holdings, scattering them to transient, low-wage jobs, and replacing their crops with imported monoculture grains erodes diversity. Who could have predicted?

-app