Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rhoné, Bénédicte
• Defrance, Dimitri
• Berthouly-Salazar, Cécile
• Mariac, Cédric
• Cubry, Philippe
• Couderc, Marie
• Dequincey, Anaïs
• Assoumanne, Aichatou
• Kane, Ndjido Ardo
• Sultan, Benjamin
• Barnaud, Adeline
• Vigouroux, Yves

Titel

Pearl millet genomic vulnerability to climate change in West Africa highlights the need for regional collaboration

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2020-10, Vol.11 (1), p.5274-9, Article 5274

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Climate change is already affecting agro-ecosystems and threatening food security by reducing crop productivity and increasing harvest uncertainty. Mobilizing crop diversity could be an efficient way to mitigate its impact. We test this hypothesis in pearl millet, a nutritious staple cereal cultivated in arid and low-fertility soils in sub-Saharan Africa. We analyze the genomic diversity of 173 landraces collected in West Africa together with an extensive climate dataset composed of metrics of agronomic importance. Mapping the pearl millet genomic vulnerability at the 2050 horizon based on the current genomic-climate relationships, we identify the northern edge of the current areas of cultivation of both early and late flowering varieties as being the most vulnerable to climate change. We predict that the most vulnerable areas will benefit from using landraces that already grow in equivalent climate conditions today. However, such seed-exchange scenarios will require long distance and trans-frontier assisted migrations. Leveraging genetic diversity as a climate mitigation strategy in West Africa will thus require regional collaboration. Replacement of local crops with alternative varieties adapted to future conditions may improve food security under climate change. Here the authors apply landscape genomics and ensemble climate modelling to pearl millet in West Africa, supporting the potential of transfrontier assisted seed exchange.