By christelle.rabil@croptrust.org
12 November 2021

Luigi Guarino reveals some curious patterns by creating an interesting mashup of georeferenced data retrieved from Genesys with datasets on deforestation and poverty.

“Deforestation” and “poverty” are two phenomena as old as time, that manifest themselves differently in different parts of the world [1;2]. When observed in the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation looks like massive hotspots stretched across the major road networks [3]. When observed in Burkina Faso, poverty looks like concentric circles moving from the boundaries of the country towards its center [4]. 

(Left: Deforestation map in Brazil’s Amazon showing the deforestation stretched across major road networks; Right: estimated average wealth levels of households in 1 square-mile populated areas, color code: red-poor, yellow-median, blue-rich)

But what do these patterns mean for crop diversity?

This is what Luigi asked in his recent post “Questioning Maps” on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

Cassava, also known to the tropical agriculture experts among you as Manihot esculenta, has been cultivated in tropical America for about 10,000 years and provides food and income for around 500 million individuals in the developing world [7]. Genesys hosts passport data of 13,379 Cassava accessions stored in many genebanks operating in North and South America. Around 6000 of these accessions are georeferenced, which allowed Luigi to map this cassava diversity over the deforestation dataset in the Brazilian Amazon. The same exercise was repeated using the poverty map of Burkina Faso [8] and the sorghum accessions map.

We leave the interpretation of the results in your hands, dear readers, to share them with your circle and with academics from other disciplines, and to explore how the data in Genesys speaks to your datasets. The Genesys helpdesk helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org is your go-to contact information in case you need advice on how to retrieve data from the platform.

References:

1. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/deforestation/ 
2. http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/62110/excerpt/9780521862110_excerpt.htm
3. https://maaproject.org/2021/amazon-hotspots-2021/
4. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2009/2009.00544.pdf
5. https://agro.biodiver.se/2021/10/questioning-maps/
6. https://agro.biodiver.se/about/
7. https://www.genesys-pgr.org/c/cassava
8. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2009/2009.00544.pdf