Hidden Rice Diversity in the Guianas

Abstract

Traditional crop varieties are an important source of genetic diversity for crop adaptation and modern breeding. Landraces of Asian (Oryza sativa) and African (Oryza glaberrima) rice have been well studied on the continents where they were domesticated. However, their history of cultivation in northern South America is poorly understood. Here we reveal the rice diversity that is maintained by Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who fled to the interior forests of the Guianas ca. 300 years ago. We interviewed subsistence farmers who practice shifting cultivation along the Maroni and Lawa rivers that form the natural border between French Guiana and Suriname, and used ethnobotanical and morphological methods to identify around 50 varieties, of which 15 were previously undocumented. The genetic origin of these varieties was explored using the Angiosperms-353 universal probe set. Despite the large distances between sites and relative inaccessibility of the area, phenotypic and genetic diversity did not display any geographic structure, which is consistent with knowledge of seed exchange among members of the same ethnolinguistic group. Although improved US cultivars were introduced in Maroon villages in the 1940s, these have not displaced the traditional landraces, which are cherished for their taste and nutritious qualities and for their importance in Maroon spiritual life. The unique agricultural and ritual practices of Maroons confirm their role as custodians of rice diversity, a role that is currently under threat from external pressures and encroaching globalization. We

A Comprehensive Phylogenomic Platform for Exploring the Angiosperm Tree of Life

“…Angiosperms353 probes are an open data resource that can be used without the expense of design or access to prior genomic data and have already been successfully applied across different taxonomic scales (e.g. Larridon et al 2019; Murphy et al 2020; Pérez-Escobar et al 2020; Shee et al 2020), including at the population level (Van Andel et al 2019; Slimp et al 2020; Beck et al 2021).…”

Memories of traditional rice cultivation by descendants of Indian contract laborers in Suriname

“…Recently, a single accession of Watralanti from the Marowijne area was shown to be genetically quite distant from traditional Maroon landraces, but quite similar to the SML cultivars Ciwini and Acorni, developed in the 1970s (Van Andel et al 2019). This suggest that some of the 'coolie rice' grown by Maroons may descend from cultivars developed after the Green Revolution, instead of from traditional Indian landraces.…”

“…Buying seed stock is exceptional among Maroon rice farmers, as most varieties are handed down within the household from generation to generation or exchanged with extended family members during funerals (Price, 1993;Van Andel et al, 2019). The potential presence of East Indian rice varieties on Maroon farms indicates that occasional introductions of 'foreign' rice varieties have taken place in the past, and in some cases were successful.…”

Niche evolution of the Neotropical tree genusOtobain the context of global biogeography of the nutmeg family, Myristicaceae

“…Further, universal probesets, including Angiosperms353, are designed such that multiple probe sequences for each locus are included to account for sequencing variability across taxa. Instead of being limiting, the universal nature of Angiosperms353 loci are proving to be informative for both very deep (e.g, (Dodsworth et al, 2019) and very shallow (e.g., within populations of rice, (Van Andel et al, 2019) phylogenetic splits. A further attractive aspect of Angiosperms353 data is that it is cost-effective to generate, especially if pre-sequencing molecular labwork is completed by the researcher and not outsourced (Hale et al, 2020).…”