User:Ctngirl/Domestication in perennial crops

Overview
The domestication process has long been a part of human civilization, with people were dependent upon farming and livestock since ancient times. In modern times, different challenges have arisen in the field of agriculture, including issue in high intensity farming that cause loss of diversity and eutrophication. The domestication process can help improve diversity in current crops, and the domestication of novel crops can help address some of the challenges of intensive agriculture. Currently, there are thousands of species of plants, with many of them underutilized for agriculture.

Domestication of perennial crops and sustainable agriculture
Agriculture is currently facing several challenges, including the need for climate resilient species, disease resistant crops, and ecologically sustainable crops. Agriculture would benefit from the development of cultivars and varieties with increased tolerance to heat, drought, flood and soil fertility, which would help improve sustainability in production.

Compared to present days annual crops, perennial crops can make a beneficial addition in sustainable agriculture. Some advantages of perennial crops over the traditional annual crops we often use include deep root system, carbon sequencing, and long juvenile phases; these all reduce the need of tillage and increase water efficiency. In perennial grain crops, some specific traits that are advantageous over annual grain crops include: longer growing season and access to resources, high biomass production, sustainable producctivity in marginal lands, tolerance to disease and pests, larger root systems and stress tolerance, and conservative use of nutrients

As a result of the many advantages of perennial crops, domestication of perennials and attempts to converts annuals into perennials are on the breeding pipelines. For example, several nitrogen fixing and legumes crops could have the potential to be cultivated as a crops that can be grow with low inputs and low-nutrients soil and maintaining ecosystem.

Some plant breeding techniques currently being employed for perennial crops include the use of marker-assisted selection, genomic in situ hybridization, transgenic technologies, and embryo rescue, coupled with traditional breeding techniques. Other efforts focus on orphans crops, like quinoa or amarthus, which have potential to create crops and thrive in environments.

Domestication has some disadvantages, like reduction of genetic variation in crop species due to the selection of specific traits for high yielding purpose. There is also a reduced ability to control pests through crop rotation and lower yields especially in perennial grain crops species.

Crop wild relatives
Crop wild relatives are great source of desirable traits for disease and pest resistant, crop quality, and rootstock characteristics. Crop improvement can be achieved via introgression or backcrossing of current crops with their wild relatives, which may tend to be more locally-adapted. Additionally, novel genetic variation can be introduced back into domesticated crops from wild relatives or intermediate landraces.

Research focused in different breeding programs
The conduction of breeding program in intermediate wheat, perennial wheat, perennial sorghum, perennial sunflower and perennial rice has been focused in development of perennial grain crops. Other activities include genomic in situ hybridization, use of marker assisted selection and transgenic technologies can be a further steps on perennialism for the next 10 to 20 years. Use of advanced breeding activities like novel phonemics approaches, genomic selection using high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) technology can be helpful in speed breeding process.