This is what Darwin described as Natural Selection or Survival of the fittest:
“individuals best adapted to their environments are more likely to survive and reproduce. As long as there is some variation between them and that variation is heritable, there will be an inevitable selection of individuals with the most advantageous variations. If the variations are heritable, then differential reproductive success leads to the evolution of particular populations of a species, and populations that evolve to be sufficiently different eventually become different species.”
He was referring to individuals, populations, and species. Not a lone individual survivor and not even a single surviving population within a species.
I appreciate efforts to work through the implications of these growing approaches.
The posts so far have inspired me to think along two different lines. The first is that to me this feels like a mirror in some ways of discussions about the “seed increase” phase that some people plan for a landrace project, where the grower may give extra attention or advantages to a small number diverse seeds so that in future seasons there is ample enough seeds for the new genetics to have a “fair chance” in the local environment.
Edit: Some growers are also doing things like gathering pollen from plants that don’t complete a full lifecycle in their climate, or that have a mismatched photo period. The purpose is to manually pollinate better-adapted varieties.
The other line of thought I’m having about this is how the humans are part of my concept of the ecological system. Among the humans, the individual plants need to have a positive relationship with the grower (am I allergic to its hairs? does it get in my way?). To survive as a crop long-term, a well-adapted crop will also have positive relationships with other humans that enjoy using it or want to add it to their own garden somewhere else.
As the landrace gardener, it’s my role to encourage my crops to adapt to this land – a landrace. I believe that includes my helping diverse plant genetics adapt to the land here. I would say it also it involves me learning how to adapt my preferences and tastes to new diversity, and helping the other humans in my environment appreciate diversity as well.
I feel that the outcome I am looking for does strongly prioritize crop diversity for my climate, but in a way that is balanced by a need for the plants to get along well with me and at least some of my family and neighbors.
Thanks again for the thought-provoking discussion.
Interesting! Intentionally increasing diversity for it’s own sake as well as narrowing diversity in local adaptation and selection contexts are currently happening with existing and expanding projects, they seem complementary and both important.
Explanation of how GTS seed share project is actively increasing diversity for it’s own sake:
including rare GRIN accession and doing seed increases, in order to add some back into our mix, for example the melon seed increase.. @anna has been supporting more seed stewards and farmers in accessing and requesting accessions of many crops this year, and requesting as many as we can get while it’s still an option. The Delicious Mix melons of 2025 included 10% seeds from those growouts. More projects happening this year. Also Joseph’s tomato project has been increasing tomato diversity more than any other project I’ve come across.
Collecting seeds from all over the country, mixing together, and making accessible to as many people as possible. Supporting growers in other countries to replicate this projects, for example the Canadian Seed share project and the potentially evolving European project. I encourage you @Juergen to support the European version happening if that’s the future access point of diverse see
There are some mixes that include multiple species, notably the Fukuoka grab bag, and the summer and winter grain mixes.
Individual growers who receive the maximum diversity seeds have the option of selecting as intensely, or not, as they want, without impacting the diversity of the whole. Everyone is encouraged to add purchased OP, or home selected, seeds from wherever their favorite sources are and allowing them to cross with the already diverse mix.
If individual seed stewards (referring to people volunteering to manage specific mixes) choose to do new extremely diverse mixes (ie mixing all types of corn), they can, I suppose as long as they can make a good case that people will want those seeds
I’d love to see other ideas for expanding diversity! Is there specific ways you can see encouraging that @Juergen?
And as for selection and reducing diversity- well we do also want to enjoy what we’re eating. Diversity if we dislike half the things we’re growing, or they don’t mature in our climate etc etc seems counterproductive.
maybe there is just a misunderstanding between us, so I’m trying to clear that up.
In the first step of adaptation (you bring a diverse plant mix to a new climate or new conditions) diversity is (usually) lost, because not all plants survive.
After growing the surviving mix for many/more years (without special, human selection), you get more and new diversity (through new combination of genes and/or mutations); in the end you may have a more diverse mix than at the beginning…
I think most people here who grow landraces will do it this way and thus increase diversity, but unconsciously. Most people who grow landraces think of adaptation (getting better adapted plants to their location) and not of increasing diversity.
My goal is to raise awareness of increasing diversity as a goal in itself, as a basis for future environmental changes or even as a basis for new, targeted breeding.
The preservation and increase of diversity should be communicated as socially necessary/important and formulated as a political goal.
Landrace gardening should not just be a private hobby…
Hello Julia,
thank you for your excellent contribution!
Adding new genes and varieties to existing, diverse landraces/grexes is one way to increase diversity. You will get a lot of new combinations this way, but nothing really new.
Something really new can only come about through mutations, which then possibly mutate again, etc.; that’s why I advocate focusing on diversity and growing plants primarily with this in mind.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t sort out all plants that we don’t like or that have any other undesirable characteristics.
But we shouldn’t be plant breeders, at least not primarily…
I like that you include the personal relationship level!
Yes, you have to like the individual, often very different plants and fruits, build a relationship with them and perhaps make them appealing to those around you so that diversity can develop.
I had to learn that myself.
Today I am happy when people around me suddenly notice that even different-looking fruits can be used and taste very well, just by bringing them into contact with the diversity of a “landrace”…
This is such an interesting remark. I’m so grateful for this community that focuses so completely on so many ways to grow so many crops, from the low input, just going to grow this and see what happens (me), to those of you tracing the genetics back for generations to find connections and bringing in new genetics to meticulously cross things up and find whole new plants, working to locate more genetic traits to add in to make a certain plant more adaptable. This discussion is an enjoyable exercise to debate the nuances of the meanings of words, but let’s remember that we are all working towards the same goal, each in our own way.
Dear Adele, you are totally right!
We are gardeners, primarily, for sure!
That’s why I want this discussion to become political, that landraces also have political significance, so that their cultivation is publicly supported, that a certain part of the agricultural area (10%?) is set aside for the cultivation of diversity.
Until that happens, I want to work to ensure that all organic farmers and as many direct marketers as possible become “ambassadors of diversity” and market landraces…
JinTX, I don’t think we disagree, it’s perhaps more of a “semantic or philosophical problem” as Adele wrote, which is difficult to discuss in writing (we would agree more easily if we could talk to each other).
As I wrote before, my main concern is to raise awareness of the importance of “diversity” (diversity of individuals).
I think I recently discovered that Darwin’s understanding of natural selection does not lead to diversity, as it focuses on the “fittest, the best adapted”, just like artificial selection, which looks for the “best”.
I would therefore like to quote a short passage from the book “What Evolution is” by the eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, which at least clarifies the problem:
"Natural selection is really a process of elimination
… Do selection and elimination differ in their evolutionary consequences? This question never seems to have been raised in the evolutionary literature. A process of selection would have a concrete objective, the determination of the “best” or “fittest” phenotype. Only relatively few individuals in a given generation would qualify and survive the selection procedure. That small sample would be able to preserve only a small amount of the whole variance of the parental population. Such survival selection would be highly restrained.
By contrast, a mere elimination of the less fit might permit the survival of a rather larger number of individuals because they have no obvious deficiencies in fitness" (p. 130-131).
Although Mayr uses the vocabulary of breeding (of evaluation), his insight points in the right direction. In nature, there is no evaluation, the only goal is reproduction. the more living beings with different characteristics can reproduce, the greater the diversity will ultimately be.
I think the goal of “life” is to multiply diversity as a kind of survival insurance.
Political is the last thing I want. We all live in different political climates, and I don’t feel this is the forum for political discussions. With that, I guess I’ve said my piece.
His definition of elimination is just an example of less severe selection pressure. It is still natural selection.
In nature more severe selection pressure would result in more “elimination” of individuals.
Even if one single individual is eliminated from a population due to not having whatever trait necessary for survival of the local conditions, that is still natural selection as Darwin defined it.
Both situations temporarily result in relatively less diversity.
There is a constant cycle of decrease and increase of genetic diversity in nature.
Adele, you’re confusing me; what is the difference for you between my two statements:
The preservation and increase of diversity should be communicated as socially necessary/important and formulated as a political goal.
That’s why I want this discussion to become political, that landraces also have political significance, so that their cultivation is publicly supported, that a certain part of the agricultural area (10%?) is set aside for the cultivation of diversity.
Maybe you misunderstood “this discussion”?
I did not mean the discussion here in the forum should be political.
I mean discussions outside in the society, in the media, in political parties and so on should debate on diversity, on growing landraces for the increase and maintenance of diversity…
The increase comes from the same process. It is not linear, each individual has a diverse genetic makeup.
So even in the rare circumstance of a reduction to a small population, the selection pressure was not acting on every gene of every individual. It was only a small number of genes that were beneficial. The rest of the gene diversity survives within that new population and as the population grows the genetic diversity expands.
Selection means something is beneficial. It doesn’t always mean it is taken away. It can be a long term process where the beneficial trait is slowly represented within the entire population.
…the beneficial (individual) is selected and will then be separated from the others, the non beneficials, and has to live alone now or with other selected beneficials.
The selection process will never add an individual to a group, it always removes individuals (or genes or whatever) from a population…
In the end, of course, it is a question of wording whether you say “fittest” - meaning “one or few” - or “fit enough”, which can mean “several, some, many”.
The question is which wording leads to more diversity (different individuals/variants)… I think the latter…
That’s it in a nutshell. Diversity is fine as long as it does not interfere with producing good stuff to eat. A good part of diversity for me is just by adding new crops rather than more genetics to the ones that already work for me, not that I’m opposed to that as long it doesn’t negatively impact production.
I also add diversity by looking for new ways to grow and use crops, in effort to let them do more of the work themselves rather than trying to force them to produce in a more traditional way. Radishes for example, I think are much more useful for eating the leaves and seed pods rather than the roots. Letting them mix up and become basically feral was easy, and a single plant can add seed pods to a hundred salads as opposed to one, if you eat the root. I don’t know that my feral radishes would qualify as a landrace, I tend to think not, unless maybe it continues for several more decades and expands outside my little garden.
I do trial new things of species that don’t easily cross and add them to my mix, if they do well. I’m much more careful with things that do easily cross, I need good indication the new one has strong potential before I let it spread pollen around my garden. I only plant those in isolation the first year or if I have a large backup of my own seeds and can simply discard the current year’s seeds, if need be. I get that indication from descriptions of heirlooms and F1 hybrids. I also look for traditional crops and seeds sources from east of the Mississippi river. I have had good luck with seeds or crops from other areas but limited, and as a rule I don’t have space or energy to gamble on unknown seeds.
I’m primarily a home gardener focused on growing as much as I can to eat fresh and put up for winter. I guess I am a plant breeder too but mostly with just a couple of things, corn and sweet potatoes. I might let something like watermelons mix up by letting good ones cross with good ones and saving seeds from the best but I don’t really consider that breeding or landracing either one. I don’t try to introduce wild or poisonous or nasty tasing things, just to add diversity. In breeding with my corn and sweet potatoes I routinely select out and narrow the gene pool, decreasing diversity in favor of what I like.
Just on the surface I’d say that statement is ridiculous. Natural selection as I understand it is responsible of the rise and fall of millions, maybe billions of species over millions or billions of years. It has no concern for even any individual species let alone with individual varieties. Species naturally come into being and species naturally go extinct. That happens over a vast amount of time.
Humans have been selecting a tiny subset of species for their own benefit for a comparatively tiny amount time, few thousand years at best compared to billions of years, I don’t see how the two are at all comparable.
I’ve already shown that Darwin explained natural selection and “survival of the fittest” referring to as many individuals as necessary.
The word fittest is not limited to any specific number. That is something you have decided on your own and it does not change the process of natural selection.
Whether it is a few or many is just two different scenarios, both occuring within the process of natural selection.
