
James S. BorrellRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew · Jodrell Laboratory
James S. Borrell
Biological Sciences
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75
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Introduction
Research Leader in Agrobiodiversity Conservation at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, UK. Interested in conserving intra-specific crop diversity, understanding evolution in crop diversity hotspots and optimising trade offs with wild biodiversity conservation to meet both biodiversity and food security global challenges.
Current research predominantly focuses on Ethiopia and Madagascar.
Education
October 2012 - January 2017
September 2008 - July 2011
Publications
Publications (75)
Background: Enset (Ensete ventricosum, Musaceae) is an African crop that currently provides the staple food for approx. 20 million Ethiopians. Whilst wild enset grows over much of East and Southern Africa and the genus extends across Asia to China, it has only ever been domesticated in the Ethiopian Highlands. Here, smallholder
farmers cultivate hu...
When populations of a rare species are small, isolated and declining under climate change, some populations may become locally maladapted. Detecting this maladaptation may allow effective rapid conservation interventions, even if based on incomplete knowledge. Population maladaptation may be estimated by finding genome-environment associations (GEA...
More than 31,000 useful plant species have been documented to fulfil needs and services for humans or the animals and environment we depend on. Despite this diversity, humans currently satisfy most requirements with surprisingly few plant species; for example, just three crops – rice, wheat and maize – comprise more than 50% of plant derived calori...
Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi sets an important inte...
Despite substantial growth in global agricultural production, food and nutritional insecurity is rising in Sub-Saharan Africa. Identification of underutilised indigenous crops with useful food security traits may provide part of the solution. Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a perennial banana relative with cultivation restricted to southwestern Ethio...
The global biodiversity crisis in agriculture is overlooked compared with that in wild systems. This must change if we are to safeguard domesticated plant diversity and meet global sustainable development and biodiversity goals. In this Perspective, we review tools developed through decades of wild biodiversity conservation and provide a framework...
The global biodiversity crisis in agriculture is overlooked compared with that in wild systems. This must change if we are to safeguard domesticated plant diversity and meet global sustainable development and biodiversity goals. In this Perspective, we review tools developed through decades of wild biodiversity conservation and provide a framework...
Agrobiodiversity is critical for human survival and wellbeing, yet is at risk of rapid and global decline. Maintaining agrobiodiversity generates private and public benefits, including climate resilience, food security and economic development opportunities. However, the costs of maintaining such public goods often fall on poor smallholder farmers...
Societal Impact Statement
The global success and expansion of a small pool of major crops, including rice, wheat and maize, risks homogenising global agriculture. Focusing on the agriculturally diverse Ethiopian Highlands, this study tested whether farm diversity tends to be lower among farmers who grow more introduced crops. Surprisingly, it was f...
Clonal propagation enables favourable crop genotypes to be rapidly selected and multiplied. However, the absence of sexual propagation can lead to low genetic diversity and accumulation of deleterious mutations, which may eventually render crops less resilient to pathogens or environmental change. To better understand this trade-off, we characteriz...
Enset-based food systems are unique to southern Ethiopia where they serve as a staple food for millions of households. Enset, a banana relative of which the entire pseudostem and corm are edible, possesses a highly unusual combination of crop traits including perenniality, highly flexible planting and harvest times, and tolerance of a very wide ran...
Madagascar's biota is hyperdiverse and includes exceptional levels of endemicity. We review the current state of knowledge on Madagascar's past and current terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by compiling and presenting comprehensive data on species diversity, endemism, and rates of species description and human uses, in addition to presenting...
Madagascar's unique biota is heavily affected by human activity and is under intense threat. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the conservation status of Madagascar's terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by presenting data and analyses on documented and predicted species-level conservation statuses, the most prevalent and relevan...
Societal Impact Statement
Climate resilient crops will become increasingly important, especially in regions where smallholder farmers are vulnerable to climate extremes. Enset, a multipurpose perennial staple crop consumed by over 20 million people in Ethiopia, purportedly provides food security during periods of drought. Here, we find evidence tha...
27 • Crop diversity plays a major role in underpinning food security. It is especially important to 28 smallholder and subsistence farmers, who often rely on crop diversity for stable and resilient 29 production. Despite this, global expansion of a small pool of major crops and the associated 30 homogenisation of global agricultural systems may dec...
Clonal propagation enables favourable crop genotypes to be rapidly selected and multiplied. However, the absence of sexual propagation can lead to low genetic diversity and accumulation of deleterious mutations, which may eventually render crops less resilient to pathogens or environmental change. To better understand this trade-off, we characteris...
Smallholder farms in the semi-arid and sub-humid tropics are particularly vulnerable to increased climate variability. Indigenous agrisystems that have co-evolved with climate variability may have developed resilience strategies. In the Southwest Ethiopian Highlands, agrisystems are dominated by the multipurpose perennial staple enset ( Ensete vent...
Crop diversity plays a major role in underpinning food security. It is especially important to smallholder and subsistence farmers, who often rely on crop diversity for stable and resilient production. Despite this, global expansion of a small pool of major crops and the associated homogenisation of global agricultural systems may decrease on-farm...
Loss of sexual reproductive capacity has been proposed as a syndrome of domestication in vegetatively propagated crops, but there are relatively few examples from agricultural systems. In this study, we compare sexual reproductive capacity in wild (sexual) and domesticated (vegetative) populations of enset ( Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman), a...
Background and Aims Delineating closely related and morphologically similar
species is difficult. Here, we integrate morphology, genetics, ploidy and
geography to resolve species and subspecies boundaries in four trees of section
Costatae (genus Betula): Betula ashburneri, B. costata, B. ermanii and B. utilis as
well as multiple subspecies and poly...
Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a multipurpose crop extensively cultivated in southern and southwestern Ethiopia for human food, animal feed, and fiber. It has immense contributions to the food security and rural livelihoods of 20 million people. Several distinct enset landraces are cultivated for their uses in traditional medicine. These landraces a...
Despite substantial growth in global agricultural production, food and nutritional insecurity is rising in Sub-Saharan Africa. Identification of underutilised indigenous crops with useful food security traits may provide part of the solution. Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a perennial banana relative with cultivation restricted to southwestern Ethio...
Efficient small-farm food systems produce a significant portion of global food supply and can support relatively high population densities. Yet chronic food insecurity on small farms persists as poverty traps when socio-ecological and techno-cultural drivers reinforce negative outcomes for individuals and households. Understudied food socionatures...
Societal Impact Statement
Digitized molecular data are vital to numerous aspects of scientific research and genetic resource use. The Convention on Biological Diversity currently refers to this as “Digital Sequence Information” (DSI), a term not widely adopted by science and lacking a clear definition. There are concerns over the access to genetic...
Understanding hybridization and introgression between natural plant populations can give important insights into the origins of cultivated species. Recent studies suggest differences in ploidy may not create such strong reproductive barriers as once thought, and thus studies into cultivated origins should examine all co-occurring taxa, including th...
Understanding hybridization and introgression between natural plant populations can give important insights into the origins of cultivated species. Recent studies suggest differences in ploidy may not create such strong reproductive barriers as once thought, and thus studies into cultivated origins should examine all co-occurring taxa, including th...
Societal Impact Statement
In rapidly changing environments species conservation can be hindered by uncertainties in distinguishing closely related species. Cryptic ongoing hybridization can add further uncertainty and could be beneficial or destructive. Here, we show that a declining birch tree species is hybridizing with a more widespread relative...
Background and Aims
Delineating closely related and morphologically similar species with overlapping ranges can be difficult. Here, we use section Costatae (genus Betula ) as a model to resolve species and subspecies boundaries in four morphologically similar trees: Betula ashburneri, Betula costata, Betula ermanii and Betula utilis (including ssp....
Never before has the biosphere, the thin layer of life we call home, been under such intensive and urgent threat. Deforestation rates have soared as we have cleared land to feed ever-more people, global emissions are disrupting the climate system, new pathogens threaten our crops and our health, illegal trade has eradicated entire plant populations...
Societal Impact Statement
Biodiversity is essential to food security and nutrition locally and globally. By reviewing the global state of edible plants and highlighting key neglected and underutilized species (NUS), we attempt to unlock plant food resources and explore the role of fungi, which along with the wealth of traditional knowledge about th...
Ensete ventricosum (Musaceae, enset) is an Ethiopian food security crop. To realize the potential of enset for rural livelihoods, further knowledge of enset diversity, genetics and genomics is required to support breeding programs and conservation. This study was conducted to explore the enset genome to develop molecular markers, genomics resources...
Background
Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a multipurpose crop extensively cultivated in southern and southwestern Ethiopia for human food, animal feed and fiber. It contributes to the food security and rural livelihoods of 20 million people. Several distinct enset landraces are cultivated for their uses in traditional medicine. Socio-economic change...
Global biodiversity hotspots are areas containing high levels of species richness, endemism and threat. Similarly, regions of agriculturally relevant diversity have been identified where many domesticated plants and animals originated, and co-occurred with their wild ancestors and relatives. The agro-biodiversity in these regions has, likewise, oft...
Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a multipurpose crop extensively cultivated in southern and southwestern Ethiopia for human food, animal feed and fiber. It contributes to the food security and rural livelihoods of 20 million people. Several distinct enset landraces are cultivated for their uses in traditional medicine. Socio-economic changes and the l...
Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a major starch staple and food security crop for 20 million people. Despite substantial diversity in morphology, genetics, agronomy and utilization across its range, nutritional characteristics have only been reported in relatively few landraces. Here, we survey nutritional composition in 22 landraces from three enset...
Mapping the distribution of crop pests and pathogens is essential to safeguard food security and sustainable livelihoods. However, these data are unavailable for many neglected and underutilised crops, particularly in developing countries. In Ethiopia, the world's largest historic recipient of food aid, the indigenous banana relative enset (Ensete...
Molecular markers can allow us to differentiate species that occupy a morphological continuum, and detect patterns of allele sharing that can help us understand the dynamics of geographic zones where they meet. Betula microphylla is a declining wetland species in NW China that forms a continuum of leaf morphology with its relative Betula tianshanic...
PREMISE
Loss of sexual reproductive capacity has been proposed as a syndrome of domestication in vegetatively propagated crops, but there are relatively few examples from agricultural systems. Compared to sexually propagated crops banked as seeds, vegetative crop diversity is typically conserved in living collections that are more costly and insecu...
Summary
Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) is the major starch staple of the
Ethiopian Highlands, where its unique attributes enhance the food security of approximately 20 million people and have earned it the title “The Tree Against Hunger”.
Yet enset-based agriculture is virtually unknown outside of its narrow zone of cultivation,
despit...
Societal Impact Statement
Enset is a staple food for over 20 million people via its starch-rich corm and pseudostem, yet it is virtually unknown outside a narrow zone of cultivation in southern
Ethiopia. Due to acculturation and urbanization coupled with climate change, emerging pests and the introduction of new crops, the extensive indigenous know...
When populations of a rare species are small, isolated and declining under climate change, some populations may become locally maladapted. Detecting this maladaptation may allow effective rapid conservation interventions, even if based on incomplete knowledge. Population maladaptation may be estimated by finding genome‐environment associations (GEA...
Climate change is expected to severely impact cultivated plants and consequently human livelihoods1–3, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)4–6. Increasing agricultural plant diversity (agrobiodiversity) could overcome this global challenge7–9 given more information on the climatic tolerance of crops and their wild relatives. Using >200,000 worldw...
Southern Arabia is a global biodiversity hotspot with a high proportion of endemic desert-adapted plants. Here we examine evidence for a Pleistocene climate refugium in the southern Central Desert of Oman, and its role in driving biogeographical patterns of endemism.
Distribution data for seven narrow-range endemic plants were collected systematica...
A multilateral investigation of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman: Musaceae) on its biology, on-farm diversity, nutritional composition, biochemistry, seed germination physiology and floral anatomy (morphology) of selected landraces had been made.
Background and Aims: Southern Arabia is a global biodiversity hotspot with a high proportion of endemic desert-adapted plants. Here we examine evidence for a Pleistocene climate refugium in the southern Central Desert of Oman, and its role in driving biogeographical patterns of endemism.
Methods: Distribution data for seven narrow-range endemic pla...
Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple [Amharic Abstract]
Dwarf birch (Betula nana) has a widespread boreal distribution but has declined significantly in Britain where populations are now highly fragmented. We analyzed the genetic diversity of these fragmented populations using markers that differ in mutation rate: conventional microsatellites markers (PCR-SSRs), RADseq generated transition and transvers...
A recent study on a group of rough-skinned Gephyromantis frogs from Madagascar (Anura: Mantellidae: Mantellinae) established a new subgenus, Asperomantis, with five described species and one undescribed candidate species. Based on newly collected material from the Bealanana District, we address the taxonomy of this candidate species, and reveal tha...
Two research expeditions surveyed the herpetofauna within the monsoon-influenced zone of Wadi Sayq, a coastal wadi system 31.5km in length, situated in the southwestern Jabal Qamar mountain range, Dhofar, Oman. Surveys were undertaken from 02 to 29 February 2012, and from 06 February to 07 March 2013. Ninety-three individuals belonging to 15 specie...
17th Student Conference on Conservation Science - Volume 50 Issue 3 - James Borrell
Table S1 Detailed information about and results of samples used in this study.
Table S2 Parameter settings and version numbers for the CLC tools used in the present analyses.
Table S3 Change in number of SNVs with different coverage thresholds being applied to the data set during the genotyping.
Fig. S1 Flow chart outlining the analysis pipeline...
Hybridisation may lead to introgression of genes among species. Introgression may be bidirectional or unidirectional, depending on factors such as the demography of the hybridising species, or the nature of reproductive barriers between them. Previous microsatellite studies suggested bidirectional introgression between diploid Betula nana (dwarf bi...
The first thorough biological assessment of the Dhofar region was conducted in 1977/1978 by the Oman Flora & Fauna Survey and published as a special report in Journal of Oman Studies (Shaw Reade et al 1980). Since then the wildlife of Oman has become comparatively well known, with the bird fauna particularly well recorded and reported (Eriksen & Vi...
The 3rd annual Citizen Cyberscience Summit (Feb 20th – 22nd, 2014) held in London, UK, brought together a diverse international community of scientists, software developers, industry, policy makers and citizen scientists, to share advances in this field. My own academic experience lies in molecular ecology and conservation. Participation in citizen...
Betula pendula and B. pubescens are common tree species of Europe that differ in ploidy level. A
continuum of morphological variation between the two species makes them hard to differentiate in the field.
The Atkinson Discriminant Function (ADF), based on leaf shape, was proposed in 1986 as a metric to
distinguish them and has since become a standa...
Summary of the 16 polymorphic microsatellite loci multiplexed for all samples.
Table S2 Summary of published pollen records of Betula species in the UK.
Table S3 Genetic diversity of 55 populations with over seven samples of the three Betula species, based on microsatellites.
Fig. S1 Pairs of leaves from a representative sample of trees used in the...
Past reproductive interactions among incompletely isolated species may leave behind a trail of introgressed alleles, shedding light on historical range movements. Betula pubescens is a widespread native tetraploid tree species in Britain, occupying habitats intermediate to those of its native diploid relatives, B. pendula and B. nana. Genotyping 11...
Habitat fragmentation represents an unprecedented threat to global biodiversity. Understanding the range at which individuals
and populations can become reproductively isolated is vital to ecosystem management and the maintenance of genetic diversity.
Here, I demonstrate an improved rapid assessment protocol for empirically measuring the settling v...
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