Genetic Diversity in 19th Century Barley (Hordeum vulgare) Reflects Differing Agricultural Practices and Seed Trade in Jämtland, Sweden

Abstract

Landrace crops are important genetic resources, both for plant breeding efforts and for studying agrarian history. The distribution of genetic diversity among landraces can reflect effects of climate, economic structure, and trade also over a limited spatial and temporal scale. In this study, we have SNP genotyped historical barley seed samples from the late 19th century, together with extant barley landrace accessions from Jämtland, Sweden, a county centrally located, situated between Sweden and Norway. We found two main genetic clusters, one associated with the main agricultural district around lake Storsjön and one in the peripheral areas. Data was also compared with genotypes from landraces from across the Scandinavian peninsula. Accessions from the peripheral part of Jämtland show genetic similarity to accessions from a large part of central Scandinavia, while the accessions from the Storsjön district are more differentiabted. We suggest that these dissimilarities in genetic diversity distribution are explained by differences in the relative importance of agriculture and trading. We further compared the historical material with ex situ preserved extant landraces from the same region and found that their genetic diversity was not always representative of the given provenience. The historical material, in contrast, proved particularly valuable for assessing how crop genetic diversity has historically been influenced by economic focus.

Heritage genetics for adaptation to marginal soils in barley

“…Numerous wild and cultivated barley accessions have been collected and conserved in gene banks [7][8][9], which await geographic, phenotypic, and molecular characterisation. Collections of landraces are therefore an important source of germplasm, genes, and traits to improve the sustainability of agriculture in the face of climate change and other environmental perturbations [10][11][12], while also having value in the assessment of the impacts of climate, migration, and trade in agrarian history [13,14]. Collectively, this can be used to infer and predict which landraces, wild relatives, and…”