PALEOQUINOA · Rescuing the adaptive secrets of ancient quinoa
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-07-01 → 2024-06-30
- EU contribution
- €184,708
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Rescuing the adaptive secrets of ancient quinoa
Food security is one of the most pressing global challenges today, as the world’s population is expected to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050. To meet the nutritional needs of this growing population, food production must increase by approximately 70%. However, this goal faces significant obstacles, including limited land availability, water scarcity, and the impacts of climate change. A key issue is the reduced genetic diversity in many crop species cultivated through millennia of domestication, which limits their ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions and threatens future food security. The PALEOQUINOA project focused on studying the domestication history and the ancient diversity of quinoa, a highly nutritious and resilient Andean pseudo-cereal increasingly recognised as a promising crop for sustaining food security. PALEOQUINOA has applied advanced ancient DNA methods and modern genomic techniques (1) to generate the first genome-scale dataset of ancient quinoa DNA variation, and (2) to clarify current models of quinoa domestication. The PALEOQUINOA data sheds new light on the evolutionary history of quinoa and represents the first paleogenomic time series assembled for this important crop species. It announces a new era of ancient DNA research investigations, non-Eurocentric and not centred on animal material, but focused on the process of plant domestication. The approach developed will facilitate future improvements in the genetic make-up of quinoa to increase its suitability as a crop.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Quinoa is a highly nutritious grain identified by the UN as an essential crop to improve world food security. Pre-Columbian cultures started the domestication of quinoa about 7,000 years ago in the highland and coastal environments of the Andes where it is adapted to various biotic and abiotic stresses. The spread of quinoa out the centres of domestication likely required adaptation to new environments supported by favourable alleles at critical genetic and epigenetic loci. However, domestication as an intensive selection process can also lead to a reduction of the genetic diversity of domesticates, reducing their adaptability plants and threatening food security. Accessing the genetic makeup of dated archaeobotanical samples provides a powerful opportunity to examine the genomic information that has changed at various stages of domestication, enabling the identification of lost genetic diversity at key loci. Archaeological studies have reported quinoa remains dating back to 4,000 years before present, but the ancient genetic diversity remains under characterised. PALEOQUINOA will take advantage of the excellent preservation of ancient DNA molecules in archaeological specimens to track the genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic changes in quinoa in the last 3,500 years. The unique combination of advanced ancient DNA techniques and cutting-edge computational methods will generate the first genome-scale dataset of ancient quinoa and characterise the domestication history of this crop. In addition to the genome, PALEOQUINOA will also investigate, for the first time, the transcriptome and epigenetic regulatory gene expression networks of ancient quinoa seeds, in relation to environmental changes. The new knowledge gained through this multidisciplinary approach will shed light into the evolutionary history of crop domestication and facilitate improvements in the genetic makeup of quinoa to increase its suitability as a crop at the time of ongoing biodiversity crisis.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisCoordinatorFrance
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union