Historic manioc genomes illuminate maintenance of diversity under long-lived clonal cultivation
Manioc-also called cassava and yuca-is among the world's most important crops, originating in South America in the early Holocene. Domestication for its starchy roots involved a near-total shift from sexual to clonal propagation, and almost all manioc worldwide is now grown from stem cuttings. In this work, we analyze 573 new and published genomes, focusing on traditional varieties from the Americas and wild relatives from herbaria, to reveal the effects of this shift to clonality. We observe kinship over large distances, maintenance of high genetic diversity, intergenerational heterozygosity enrichment, and genomic mosaics of identity-by-descent haploblocks that connect all manioc worldwide. Interviews with Indigenous traditional farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado illuminate how traditional management strategies for sustaining, diversifying, and sharing the gene pool have shaped manioc diversity.
Authors
- Shuya Zhang
- J. Moises Mendoza F. (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-7051)
- Marcelo Fragomeni Simon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5732-1716)
- Eduardo Alano Vieira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4931-3895)
- Daniela Valenzuela (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7318-1947)
- Aakrosh Ratan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0782-3056)
- José M. Capriles (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6046-0939)
- Jazmín Ramos‐Madrigal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1661-7991)
- Sergei V. Drovetski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1832-5597)
- Nathan Wales (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0359-8450)
- Francisco Rothhammer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5228-1180)
- Audrey T. Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2505-1480)
- Calógero M. Santoro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3702-8408)
- Fábio de Oliveira Freitas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1242-6119)
- Eder Jorge de Oliveira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8992-7459)
- Natalia A. S. Przelomska (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9207-4565)
- Hsiao‐Lei Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3554-4994)
- Marisol Corona Perez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1271-536X)
- Logan Kistler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5730-5986)
- Rafał M. Gutaker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9226-879X)
- Luiz Joaquim Castelo Branco Carvalho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9766-2304)
- Alejandra I. Domic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0762-3967)
- S. Yoshi Maezumi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4333-1972)
- Robin G. Allaby (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5046-002X)
- Hope Loiselle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6197-4752)
- Magdalena García (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1128-9941)
- Rachel A. Miller
- Kevin Wann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1045-3833)
Institutions
- Smithsonian Institution (US)
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- American Museum of Natural History (US)
- National Museum of Natural History (US)
- University of Tarapacá (CL)
- Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (BR)
- University of Washington (US)
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (GB)
- University of Warwick (GB)
- Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado (BO)
- Center for Dynamic Research on High Latitude Marine Ecosystems (CL)
- Metropolitan University of Technology (CL)
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (DE)
- University of Virginia (US)
- University of York (GB)
- University of Portsmouth (GB)
- Texas A&M University (US)
- McMaster University (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2025-03-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq0018
- Citations
- 10
- Primary Topic
- Plant Taxonomy and Phylogenetics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 30.27