Creating Landrace Diversity: The Case of the Ari People and Ensete (Ensete ventricosum) in Ethiopia

Methods for vegetative propagation of wild enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) that make genotype conservation possible

“…Moreover, as this is the first work to show that wild enset possess sucker regeneration capacity when propagated in the same traditional vegetative propagation method that has been used to regenerate the domesticated enset since antiquity, therefore, it would also offer insight into how domesticated enset landraces arose from wild E. ventricosum. The current indication appears to reinforce previously postulated hypothesis on domestication process of enset; €domestication in enset involves the selection of individuals from wild populations based on desirable morpho-agronomic characters; once identified and selected, the wild individuals are brought to home gardens, named and added to cultivated landraces and maintained through vegetative propagation€ (Shigeta 1996;Olango et al, 2015).…”

Hybridization, missing wild ancestors and the domestication of cultivated diploid bananas

“…The clonal nature of these crops has indeed led to the over-simplified assumption that most of them were resulting from the capture and clonal multiplication of interesting wild genotypes (McKey et al, 2010). However, a few in depth studies provided interesting insights, highlighting for some species the regular occurrence of sexual reproduction despite their vegetative mode of propagation, as in Ensete ventricosum (Shigeta, 1996), cassava (Pujol et al, 2005;Sardos et al, 2008) and yams (Dioscorea spp.) (Chaïr et al, 2010), or a hybrid nature for other species (Chaïr et al, 2016;Feng et al, 2021;Pompidor et al, 2021).…”

Genetic Diversity, Population Structure and Selection Signatures in Enset (Ensete ventricosum, (Welw.) Cheesman), an Underutilized and Key Food Security Crop in Ethiopia

“…Importantly, moderate genetic differentiation was found between wild and cultivated enset from South Omo. This might be due to the co-existence of wild and cultivated enset in the South Omo region, where farmers introduce wild accessions into the cultivation areas and hence genetic exchange occurs between cultivated and wild populations of enset in this particular region (Shigeta 1992). In contrast, the highest F ST value (0.17) was observed between wild enset and accessions from Gurage (Table 4).…”

“…In this context, it is interesting that wild enset had lower levels of heterozygosity than expected, indicating that wild enset is a sexually propagated plant within a restricted area, which will limit gene ow and lead to inbreeding and increased homozygosity (Table 3) (Birmeta et al 2004;Shigeta 1992). Moreover, the suitable habitats for wild enset has been sharply declining in Ethiopia because of population growth and deforestation, and the geographical range of wild enset is more limited, possibly due to more speci c ecological requirements or alternatively loss of habitat (Birmeta et al 2004;Borrell et al 2019;Olango et al 2015).…”

“…, perennial ryegrass(Kovi et al 2015), soybean(Li et al 2014), European beech(Laura et al 2018), banana(Hinge et al 2022) and common bean(Papa et al 2007) for identifying adaptive differentiation. Markers detected in these crops have been mapped to the genomic regions with known QTL/genes related to domestication.Wild enset propagates by seed under natural condition, while cultivated enset is propagated only vegetatively by local farmers(Borrell et al 2019;Brandt et al 1997;Shigeta 1992). Most probably the genetic differences between wild and cultivated enset populations can be attributed to the different reproduction systems(Birmeta et al 2004; Gerura et al 2019; Olango et al 2015; Tesfamicael et al 2020).…”