Though the diversity of native crop varieties (landraces) may be useful for increasing food security under novel environmental conditions, in the scenario of a soot-producing catastrophe, local genetic diversity is insufficient to ensure agricultural resilience without long-distance genotype substitutions or crop shifts.
Keywords: Biological Sciences (Evolutionary Biology), Crop modeling, genomic offset, genotype-environment associations, nuclear winter
The diversity found in landraces is like a long-running natural experiment shaped by local environments and farming practices. By linking this diversity to the conditions that shaped it, our study offers a way to understand what environmental differences drive native crop diversity, and how this diversity can be used to minimize maladaptation under novel climates. – McLaughlin
Resilience of cereal crop cultivation under extreme climate scenarios, such as those following a soot-producing catastrophe, depends heavily on the adaptability of existing agricultural systems. One approach for improving agricultural resilience is to identify beneficial genetic variation within native crop varieties (landraces) whose diversity reflects local adaptation across different environmental gradients. Using genotype-environment associations, which are powerful tools for capturing long-term signals of adaptation, scientists from Pennsylvania State University assessed how reductions in temperature and solar radiation would affect the suitability of current landraces across key agricultural regions. Results showed that colder post-catastrophic climates were predicted to severely disrupt phenological development, delaying or preventing maturity—especially at higher latitudes. Genomic offset (GF offset) analysis revealed that landraces would become highly maladapted in many regions, particularly under the most extreme climate disruptions. In many cases, local genetic diversity within a species was insufficient to support adaptation through assisted migration, highlighting the limited resilience of in situ landrace collections under post-catastophic climates.
Genotype-environment models, validated through common garden trials, captured broad patterns of local adaptation and identified key environmental drivers, such as average temperature and solar radiation during reproductive growth. However, even the best-matched genotype substitutions often required long-distance migration, and some regions had no well-adapted alternatives. Notably, rice (Oryza sativa subsp. indica) exhibited considerable sensitivity to reduced temperatures, though variation among genotypes suggests potential for selective substitution. In regions where cereal cultivation remains possible, maintaining within-site diversity and identifying multiple suitable genotypes may improve resilience. For highly vulnerable regions lacking viable substitutions, alternatives such as faster-maturing varieties or cold-tolerant crops like potato may be necessary, though these require substantial behavioral and infrastructural shifts. While focused on soot-induced climate cooling scenarios, the framework developed here offers a broader tool for evaluating crop adaptation under future climate change and guiding global strategies for assisted gene flow.
SorghumBase examples:
B)
Reference:
M McLaughlin C, Shi Y, Viswanathan V, Sawers RJH, Kemanian AR, Lasky JR. Maladaptation in cereal crop landraces following a soot-producing climate catastrophe. Nat Commun. 2025 May 8;16(1):4289. PMID: 40341125. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-59488-6. Read more
Related Project Websites:
- Lasky Lab at Pennsylvania State University: https://jesserlasky.github.io/laskylab-web/
- Food Resilience in the Face of Catastrophic Global Events Project website:
https://sites.psu.edu/emergencyfoodresilience/
