A Study On The Relationship Between The Local Protection Of Farmhouse Genetic Resources And The Traditional Culture In Yunnan, Guizhou And Guangxi Nationalities

Crop genetic resources is the important component of biodiversity, and it is also crucial to the food security. However, due to the large-scale promotion of new crop varieties, the single specie problem and loss of genetic diversity become serious. In order to protect these valuable genetic resources, Ex-situ conservation methods such as germplasm genebank are widely used for the protection of traditional crop varieties resources in the world However, the Ex-situ conservation can not maintain dynamic evolutionary process of crop genetic resources in their original environment, and it is also cause farmers lost their opportunity to select and manage corp varieties, which lead to the decrease of the genetic diversity richness. Therefore, the conservation strategy of farmers’ participating, known as On-farm (In-situ) Conservation has aroused wide concern from the related scholars, they think that On-farm Conservation can keep crops continuing to evolve in their original areas, and it includes the influences of farmers’ participation and choice, national cultural customs and traditional knowledge on the preservation and utilization of crop varieties resources, which effectively increasing the genetic background and genetic diversity. In China, crop genetic resources are abundant in Southwest area, but studies on On-farm Conservation of crop genetic resources in Yunnan are rare, Guizhou and Guangxi have not been reported.In this study, we choose Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (referred to as Dianqiangui) for the study sites, by combining the collection history of traditional crop genetic resources in each province,12 ethnic groups which live in 32 ethnic villages are selected, the fieldwork investigation is mainly about the historical change and current preservation status of traditional crop varieties in each village and more than 15% of households had been randomly chosen to do the questionnaire interviews in each village, which provide some information concerning the reasons of the disappearance and preservation of traditional landraces, the attitude towards the cultivation, protection and development of traditional crops. Besides, we can find out the status quo of crop genetic resources in China’s ethnic regions and explore the influence factors of In-situ conservation of crop genetic resources, and study the relationship between ethnic traditional culture and In-situ conservation.In addition, taking rice landraces for example, through SSR molecular genetic markers test, comparing the genetic diversity within populations of the same name landrace collected at different periods from the In-situ conservation and Ex-situ conservation, the results reveal the rich genetic diversity basis of the landraces population and the positive impact of In-situ conservation on genetic diversity. This study based on the sufficient survey datas and experimental results, analyzed the practicability and superiority of In-situ conservation of crop genetic resources, and drawn the following conclusions:(1) Preservation status quo of traditional crop varieties in different ethnic regions are quite different.Firstly, Areas reserved a large number and scale of traditional crop varieties: These areas are generally located at high elevations, harsh natural environment, incontinent transportation and with the low economic level. Secondly, Areas reserved a small number and scale of traditional crop varieties:These areas are generally at moderate altitude, traffic developed, and with the medium economic level, these minorities are still reserve traditional crop varieties such as old glutinous rice landraces with a small-scale cultivation, mainly be used for the ethnic or religious festival. Thirdly, Areas without traditional crop varieties, but still reserved the utilization methods:These areas are usually convenient in traffic, located around the city, based on its own economic pillar industries and with a high level of economic development,. However, they still buy some glutinous rice at traditional and religious festivals, which protect the traditional utilization patterns and crop varieties resources. Finnally, All investigated areas with genetic resources such as vegetables and beans are well-preserved:Due to the small demand, the vegetable landraces mainly with a small-scale plantation for self-sufficiency, which promote the better protection to the genetic resources.(2) Influence factors of cultivation of traditional rice landraces are mainly cultural and social factors, disappearance is mainly economic factors.Among the farmers keeping the cultivation of rice landraces,90% holds that the cultivation and utilization of traditional rice genetic resources are mainly influenced by social and cultural factors, which meet the demand of various ethnic customs and culture traditions, such as various festivals, religious ritual activities, tastes habits, a gift in the weddings and funerals and so on, the glutinous rice and red rice landraces are absolutely necessary. Among the farmers discarding the rice landraces,60% is due to the low yield (economic factors), 25% is due to the lack of labor (social factors),14% is due to the water shortage (natural factors). Due to the minority ethnic areas are influenced by cultural and social factors deeply,57.5% of the surveyed farmers will continually cultivate traditional rice landraces for hundreds of years or several years.(3) The ethnic characteristics and cultural level are the essential factors to the management and decisions of traditional rice landraces.By doing questionnaire survey to 463 farmers in 32 villages, we study the correlationship between the farmers with different social characteristics (gender, age, culture level and ethnic group) and their cognitive attitude towards traditional rice landreces (whether or not they cultivate and protect). The results show that 1) whether or not they cultivate the rice landraces, the viewpoints of different ethnic group are extremely different, different cultural level farmers are significantly different, different gender and age farmers have similar views.2) whether or not they protect the rice landraces, farmers with different gender, age, culture level and ethnic group have no obvious difference, only slight difference.(4) Traditional rice landraces within populations have the relatively abundant genetic background and diversity.The polymorphism differences within the populations of 48 rice landraces in 13 pairs of SSR marker from Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou is large. The average number of alleles (Na) is 2.404, the effective number of alleles (Ne) is 1.3794, Nei genetic diversity index (He) is 0.1927, Shannon information index (Ⅰ) is 0.3565. Genetic diversity and heterozygosity of Yunnan landrace populations is higher than Guizhou and Guangxi, Guizhou generally higher than Guangxi. Differences in population genetic structure of 48 rice landraces are very significantly (P<0.001), the percentage of variation among populations is 77.1%, the percentage of variation within populations is 22.9%. RM333, RM241, RM586 and RM257 primers showed good results for the detection of genetic diversity within the populations of rice landraces.(5) The genetic diversity of the same name rice landrace populations collected in different periods in In-situ conservation is higher than Ex-situ conservation.The number of alleles (Na), effective number of alleles (Ne), Nei genetic diversity index (He) and Shannon information index (Ⅰ) of the same name varieties with Ex-situ conservation higher than Ex-situ conservation with 2.3%～30.4%. More than 54% in 24 pairs of the same name landrace, the genetic diversity index of In-situ conservation populations were higher than Ex-situ conservation populations. Specific alleles of In-situ conservation populations is 1.73 times of Ex-situ conservation populations,67% in 24 pairs of the same name, the number of alleles of In-situ conservation populations were higher than Ex-situ conservation populations. The average heterozygosity of In-situ conservation populations is 1.5 times than Ex-situ conservation populations. The average heterozygosity of In-situ conservation populations is the same with the Ex-situ conservation populations. It is thus clear that In-situ conservation on-farm can effectively promote the occurrence of allelic variation and increase the genetic diversity and genetic heterogeneity of rice landraces.(6) On-farm conservation of crop genetic resources and ethnic traditional culture promote each other.Ethnic traditional culture such as food culture, festival celebration, religious beliefs and traditional farming methods plays a positive role to protect genetic diversity of crop genetic resources, and in turn, the preservation of traditional crop genetic resources promote the heritage and development of traditional culture. Therefore, Ethnic traditional culture protect crop genetic resources, crop genetic resources as a carrier of traditional culture, transfer and protect traditional culture, the two promote and protect each other.This is the first time to study On-farm Conservation of crop genetic resources from the macro and micro level. The study selects ethnic minority areas, systematic research on the protection of crop genetic resources by the means of field ecology and molecular biology have been done, which explores the superiority and practicability of on-farm conservation, the topic of this paper is novel and original. Furthermore, the dissertation analyzes the differences of the genetic diversity of the same name rice landraces with In-situ conservation and Ex-situation conservation, and elucidates the positive role of ethnic traditional culture to the promotion of rice landraces genetic diversity. The results have obvious innovation.