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Evolutionary consequences of agricultural propagation of wild plants

Agricultural seed propagation of wild plants is essential to ensure a sufficient quantity of seeds for ecosystem restoration. However, agricultural cultivation of wild plants can lead to unintended selection and the plants can evolve into a domestication syndrome. We have conducted a series of experiments in community gardens and molecular analyses to test whether this is indeed the case. We have shown that plants in cultivation do not lose all genetic diversity through genetic drift (Conrady et al. 2022). However, we have found that there is selection - over generations, plants become larger, produce more flowers and lose adaptive genetic variability, especially in flowering phenology (Conrady et al. 2023). This loss of variability can be partly explained by the common practice of harvesting seeds only once per season (Kasper 2025, unpublished). Although the observed changes are significant, they are rather small - 5-8 % of phenotypic variability is lost per cultivated generation. Accordingly, an average of 95.5 % of phenotypic variability is captured in a single harvest. The results suggest that the changes during cultivation are unlikely to have a negative impact on the success of restoration with farm-produced seed - as long as the number of generations in cultivation is kept low. This is supported by the fact that regionally produced seed maintains regional adaptation through the cultivation process.

People: Malte Conrady (alumni, now University Münster), Anna Bucharova

Papers: 

Conrady M*, Lampei C, Bossdorf O, Hölzel N, Michalski S, Durka W, Bucharova A (2023) Plants cultivated for ecosystem restoration can evolve toward a domestication syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, e2219664120. Open Access. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.221966412.

Conrady M*, Lampei C, Bossdorf O, Durka W, Bucharova A (2022). Evolution during seed production for ecological restoration? A molecular analysis of 19 species finds only minor genomic changes. Journal of Applied Ecology, 59, 1383–1393. Open Access. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.14155.