Maladaptation in cereal crop landraces following a soot-producing climate catastrophe

Maladaptation in cereal crop landraces following a soot-producing climate catastrophe

Blog Article

Abstract Aerosol-producing catastrophes like nuclear war or asteroid strikes, though rare, pose serious risks to human survival.The injected aerosols would reduce solar radiation, lower temperatures, and alter precipitation, T-Shirt impacting crop productivity, including for locally adapted traditional crop varieties, i.e.

landraces.We assess post-catastrophic climate effects on crops with extensive landrace cultivation, barley, maize, rice, and sorghum, under climate scenarios that differ in the quantity of soot injection.Using a crop growth model, we estimate environmental stress gradients and together with genomic markers apply gradient forest offset methods to predict post-catastrophic maladaptation in landraces over time.

We find landraces are most maladapted where soot-induced climate shifts were strongest.Validating our approach, gradient forest models successfully capture a signal of maize landrace adaptation in common gardens across Mexico.We further use our gradient forest models to identify landrace varieties best matched to Visor Cap specific post-catastrophic conditions, indicating potential substitutions for agricultural resilience.

The best substituted varieties require long migration distances, often across country borders, though countries with more climatic diversity have better within-country substitutions.Our findings highlight that a soot-producing catastrophe would drive global maladaptation in landraces and suggest current adaptive diversity is insufficient for agricultural resilience.