Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

90 Hope Not Hype
Critically, the places to be most optimistic about gene pool diversity are the centres
of crop origin, where landraces form large in situ conservation areas, and even in exotic
locations that may nevertheless support some interbreeding distant relatives or diverged
varieties (Damania, 2008).
[T]here is also enormous diversity in wheat landraces and wild relatives. It is still not clear
just how much of the natural variability within the Triticeae family has been harnessed: in
bread wheat, there are predictions that it might be as little as 10-15% of the available gene
pool (Able and Langridge, 2006, p. 261).
Others take advantage of an accidental 500-year breeding experiment. Wheat came to Mexico
with the conquistadors…In the half-millennium since, farmers have adapted it to the dry
local conditions. Many of these strains have very deep roots (Marris, 2008, pp. 275-276).
While the wealthiest nations may have exhausted many of the yield optimization
traits appropriate for their intensive and well-irrigated agroecosystems, there may be more
and more relevant yield-enhancing genes available in the agroecosystems that dominate
in the developing world. Increasing output in these agroecosystems is critically important
(Molden, 2007).
A large-scale farmer in subSaharan Africa can get a yield of 10 metric tons (MT) per hectare
for maize, whereas a poor farmer using a comparable variety with little or no inputs will
obtain a yield