Cultivar diversity and management as traditional environmental knowledge

Techniques for recognizing, maintaining and developing cultivar diversity have existed since the beginnings of human plant domestication and cultivation. We owe to pioneers such as Conklin our appreciation of the extensiveness of such local knowledge and especially how this is encoded in language. This essay reviews the history of our understanding of diversity management amongst local and traditional peoples, in relation to rice, potato, cassava, maize and sago. I explore the conceptual issues arising from the use of terms such as 'cultivar', landrace, varietal and folk-variety, and how these are treated in ethnobiological classification. I discuss the interconnection between ecological and cultural selection, knowledge of plant maturation and reproduction (both seed and vegetative propagation), and planting strategies. I look at how farmers use different cultivar qualities, and thereby influence their responses to innovation and change. I pay particular attention to the social embeddedness of knowledge, dissemination and exchange of germplasm, and the consequences of diversity loss, due to farming intensification (the Green Revolution), environmental challenges (such as El Niño, and progressive aridification) and the introduction of hybrid strategies