Farmers’ Variety Naming and Crop Varietal Diversity of Two Cereal and Three Legume Species in the Moroccan High Atlas, Using DATAR

Agnès Bernis-Fonteneau (), Meryem Aakairi, Omar Saadani-Hassani, Giandaniele Castangia, Rachid Ait Babahmad, Paolo Colangelo, Ugo D’Ambrosio and Devra I. Jarvis
Additional contact information
Agnès Bernis-Fonteneau: Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Meryem Aakairi: Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association, Av. Sidi Abad 1, N° 280, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
Omar Saadani-Hassani: Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association, Av. Sidi Abad 1, N° 280, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
Giandaniele Castangia: Global Diversity Foundation (GDF), 37 St. Margaret’s Street, Canterbury CT1 2TU, UK
Rachid Ait Babahmad: Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association, Av. Sidi Abad 1, N° 280, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
Paolo Colangelo: National Research Council, Institute on Terrestrial Ecosystems, Via Salaria km 29,300, Montelibretti, 00015 Rome, Italy
Ugo D’Ambrosio: Global Diversity Foundation (GDF), 37 St. Margaret’s Street, Canterbury CT1 2TU, UK
Devra I. Jarvis: Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR), The Raffaella Foundation, Twisp, WA 98856, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-17

Abstract: Local agrobiodiversity in remote areas such as the Moroccan High Atlas is poorly studied, despite being of great importance for the sustainability and resilience of mountainous populations. This includes important species such as wheat ( Triticum spp.), barley ( Hordeum vulgare ), fava beans ( Vicia faba ), peas ( Pisum sativum ), and alfalfa ( Medicago sativa ). This study aimed to better understand varietal naming by farmers and the traits they use for assessing the current diversity of the five species, in 22 locations, distributed across three hubs of the High Atlas. The data were provided by 282 Amazigh informants during focus-group discussions, household surveys, and market surveys, with the support of the Diversity Assessment Tool for Agrobiodiversity and Resilience (DATAR). The use of local terminology for variety names and systematically collected morphological, ecological, and use descriptors appears to be a valuable way to assess local intraspecific diversity, and further comparisons with genomic results are recommended. Furthermore, the results also indicate low diversity at the household level, which contrasts with the greater diversity at the community level. Larger areas are still planted with landraces compared to areas planted with modern varieties, although the levels of richness (number) of both landraces and modern varieties are equivalent overall. Many factors influence this diversity: the biophysical characteristics of the sites, the socio-economic and management practices of farmers, and the availability of varietal diversity and of modern varieties or landraces. Although selection processes have reduced the local diversity available for economically important crops, we found that farmers still rely greatly on landraces, which present traits and variability that allow them to adapt to local conditions.

Keywords: agrobiodiversity; agroecology; Amazigh; ethnotaxonomy; barley; wheat; fava bean; pea; alfalfa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10411/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10411/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:13:p:10411-:d:1184996

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().