Dataset Information

Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication.

ABSTRACT: While there has been progress in our understanding of the origin and history of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, a unified perspective is still lacking on where and how major crops were domesticated in the region. Here, we investigated the domestication of African yam (Dioscorea rotundata), a key crop in early African agriculture. Using whole-genome resequencing and statistical models, we show that cultivated yam was domesticated from a forest species. We infer that the expansion of African yam agriculture started in the Niger River basin. This result, alongside with the origins of African rice and pearl millet, supports the hypothesis that the vicinity of the Niger River was a major cradle of African agriculture.

SUBMITTER: Scarcelli N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6527260 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication.

Scarcelli Nora N Cubry Philippe P Akakpo Roland R Thuillet Anne-Céline AC Obidiegwu Jude J Baco Mohamed N MN Otoo Emmanuel E Sonké Bonaventure B Dansi Alexandre A Djedatin Gustave G Mariac Cédric C Couderc Marie M Causse Sandrine S Alix Karine K Chaïr Hâna H François Olivier O Vigouroux Yves Y

Science advances 20190501 5

While there has been progress in our understanding of the origin and history of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, a unified perspective is still lacking on where and how major crops were domesticated in the region. Here, we investigated the domestication of African yam (<i>Dioscorea rotundata</i>), a key crop in early African agriculture. Using whole-genome resequencing and statistical models, we show that cultivated yam was domesticated from a forest species. We infer that the expansion of Afr ...[more]

PMID: 31114806

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Project description:Achieving food security goals in West Africa will depend on the capacity of the agricultural sector to feed the rapidly growing population and to moderate the adverse impacts of climate change. Indeed, a number of studies anticipate a reduction of the crop yield of the main staple food crops in the region in the coming decades due to global warming. Here, we found that crop production might have already been affected by climate change, with significant yield losses estimated in the historical past. We used a large ensemble of historical climate simulations derived from an atmospheric general circulation model and two process-based crop models, SARRA-H and CYGMA, to evaluate the effects of historical climate change on crop production in West Africa. We generated two ensembles of 100 historical simulations of yields of sorghum and millet corresponding to two climate conditions for each crop model. One ensemble is based on a realistic simulation of the actual climate, while the other is based on a climate simulation that does not account for human influences on climate systems (that is, the non-warming counterfactual climate condition). We found that the last simulated decade, 2000-2009, is approximately 1 °C warmer in West Africa in the ensemble accounting for human influences on climate, with more frequent heat and rainfall extremes. These altered climate conditions have led to regional average yield reductions of 10-20% for millet and 5-15% for sorghum in the two crop models. We found that the average annual production losses across West Africa in 2000-2009 associated with historical climate change, relative to a non-warming counterfactual condition (that is, pre-industrial climate), accounted for 2.33-4.02 billion USD for millet and 0.73-2.17 billion USD for sorghum. The estimates of production losses presented here can be a basis for the loss and damage associated with climate change to date and useful in estimating the costs of the adaptation of crop production systems in the region.

Dataset Information

Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication.

Publications

Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication.

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