Dynamics of diversity, societies and environments (DDSE)

Context and issues

Last update: 9 January 2020

Crop diversity results from a series of domestication events, gene flows between wild and cultivated compartments, natural adaptive breeding effects but above all, from wide geographical selection and dispersion by farmers, often over long periods of time.

This diversity is therefore the product of a temporal and spatial process of evolution and diversification of species, of which man imposes a large part of the rules. 

Understanding these dynamics of evolution is the team's central theme, which affirms the need to add to environmental and biological factors all other factors and mechanisms related to human societies as actors, past or present, in the domestication, diffusion, selection, creation and maintenance of diversity.

In heterogeneous agricultural contexts, agriculture is based on a diversity of cropping systems that often combine many species. For each system, the diversity of cultivated forms is related to a diversity of uses, including cash crops food and non-food functions, and more generally to a diversity of social demands.

Networks for the exchange of knowledge and plant material, are often limited in space. Varietal improvement exists but, integrated into agricultural practices, remains diverse and not very formalized. Thus, depending on the context, the opportunities and expectations, in terms of the variety landscape, are immense and offer significant scope for action.

Last update: 9 January 2020