“Landrace” (or “traditional, original, or primitive population,” or simply a population that meets the definition) is the term used to describe a population that is composed of at least 80% unique, distinct individuals that freely reproduce sexually with each other.
Anyone looking for clear, vivid examples of old and new “landraces” can simply look at the language and dialect groups within humanity. In Europe, Africa, and Asia, you’ll find “old landraces,” while on the American continent, you’ll find “new landraces.”
For me your definition is a great start, but is lacking the cultural component of landraces.
Perhaps here’s another one sentence definition:
A landrace is a locally adapted, genetically diverse, and continually evolving population of a crop shaped by natural and human selection, maintained through generations of seed saving and exchange, and deeply embedded in the farming practices, foodways, and cultural identities of the communities that steward it.
what do you think? how does that fit with your idea of ‘new vs old’? I learnt about old landraces from folks in the Americas as many of the food crops we eat come from here such as beans, corn, tomatoes, etc and have a long history of selection with broad genetics…
I’m one of the editors of the Wikipedia article Landrace. I don’t think the definition in that article is useful across all situations, some of that is due to lack of encyclopedic sources and others is probably the ongoing evolution of the word itself.
More in case you’re curious than out of usefulness to the definition, I worked a bit on the terminology heading which attempts to explain the history of the word itself: Landrace - Wikipedia
When working on an encyclopedia article I can’t necessarily make changes I’d like to or even once that I think are a good idea. For example, there isn’t any published writing that uses the word landrace with regard to fungi. To me I think the term and concept could apply to fungus but the Wikipedia text only refers to plants and animals because that’s what the sources we had refer to.