Domestication and diversification in Ethiopian enset (Ensete ventricosum)

International audience The Ethiopian false banana, enset (Ensete ventricosum, Musaceae), a relative of sweet bananas and plantains, is a giant perennial herb grown widely in southern Ethiopia for its starchy pseudostem and corm, as well as for use as a fibre, packaging, and medicinal plant. A staple food in southwest Ethiopia for some 20 million people, where it grows across a wide range of altitudinal and ecological gradients, it is called the ‘tree against hunger' because of its reliability even under conditions of environmental stress. Our interdisciplinary project ‘Evolutionary dynamics of vegetative agriculture in the Ethiopian Highlands' is integrating archaeobotany, ethnobotany and historical approaches, genomics and biogeography to understand how enset has been domesticated and diversified in the context of vegetative agriculture in Ethiopia.Although the wild form of enset is widely distributed through eastern and southern Africa, enset has only been domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. The history of its cultivation is obscure, although Musaceae remains, which could be wild or domesticated enset, were found in the Kumali rockshelter in southwest Ethiopia from levels above charcoal dated to 1740 bp (1). Domestication traits include reduced sexual reproduction, improved palatability, and the selection of triploid lineages, paralleling the domestication of the related banana (Musa).In the last few years, the sequencing of the enset genome has opened the way for genetic research on this crop, which will advance understanding of its domestication, and facilitate crop improvement to ensure food security in southwest Ethiopia despite changing climate and fungal pathogen threats. In this talk we present early results from resequencing around 700 domesticated and 100 wild samples, representing the diversity of enset in Ethiopia. This presentation will discuss how population genomic analysis helps understand enset evolution under domestication, including population structure, demographic history, environmental adaptation, and domestication traits. The development of genomic resources also opens up potential for integrating ancient DNA analysis of herbarium and archaeological enset to improve knowledge of enset cultivation chronology.(1) Hildebrand, EA, Brandt, SA, Lesur-Gebremariam J. Afr Archaeol Rev (2010) 27:255–289. DOI 10.1007/s10437-010-9079-8