Leverage avocado genetic resources for the sustainable socioeconomic development of rural communities in Tanzania

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) is becoming a top fruit commodity worldwide. It is therefore a promising plant resource to improve farmers’ income and nutrition.

However, its genetic resources have limitedly been explored and utilized in secondary diversity genepools such as Southeast Africa’s.

Therefore, the overall purpose of this starting grant proposal is to harness the genetic and ecological diversity of avocado resources for adaptation to climate change and farmers’ wellbeing in Tanzania, a secondary center of avocado diversity.

We hypothesize that adaptation in response to local ecological opportunities and inter-racial hybridization may sustainably source the rapid growth of avocado plantations in Tanzania.

During four years, a total of 900 trees, and their progenies, will be monitored through extensive field surveys, greenhouse experiments, whole-genome re-sequencing (WGR), and last-generation analytical approaches such as genomic prediction and machine learning.

This effort will throw lights into the standing variation of avocado resources in Tanzania, as well as into innovative ways to leverage such diversity.

Assessing crop recourses at this secondary center will ultimately unlock its extraordinary agro-biodiversity to make avocado fruit trees more resilient to climate change and profitable for farmers, while sustainably offsetting the winnowing effects of intensive cropping on natural genetic variation.