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Even though genetic resources represent a fundamental reservoir of options to achieve sustainable development goals in a changing world, they are overlooked in the policy agenda and severely threatened. The conservation of genetic resources relies on complementary in situ and ex situ approaches appropriately designed for each type of organism. Environmental and socioeconomic changes raise new challenges and opportunities for sustainable use and conservation of genetic resources. Aiming at a more integrated and adaptive approach, European scientists and genetic resources managers with long experience in the agricultural crop, animal and forestry domains joined their expertise to address three critical challenges: (1) how to adapt genetic resources conservation strategies to climate change, (2) how to promote in situ conservation strategies and (3) how can genetic resources conservation contribute to and benefit from agroecological systems. We present here 31 evidence-based statements and 88 key recommendations elaborated around these questions for policymakers, conservation actors and the scientific community. We anticipate that stakeholders in other genetic resources domains and biodiversity conservation actors across the globe will have interest in these crosscutting and multi-actor recommendations, which support several biodiversity conservation policies and practices.

Even though genetic resources represent a fundamental reservoir of options to achieve sustainable development goals in a changing world, they are overlooked in the policy agenda and severely threatened. The conservation of genetic resources relies on complementary in situ and ex situ approaches appropriately designed for each type of organism. Environmental and socioeconomic changes raise new challenges and opportunities for sustainable use and conservation of genetic resources.Aiming at a more integrated and adaptive approach, European scientists and genetic resources managers with long experience in the agricultural crop, animal and forestry domains joined their expertise to address three critical challenges: (1) how to adapt genetic resources conservation strategies to climate change, (2) how to promote in situ conservation strategies and (3) how can genetic resources conservation contribute to and benefit from agroecological systems. We present here 31 evidence-based statements and 88 key recommendations elaborated around these questions for policymakers, conservation actors and the scientific community.We anticipate that stakeholders in other genetic resources domains and biodiversity conservation actors across the globe will have interest in these crosscutting and multi-actor recommendations, which support several biodiversity conservation policies and practices.

Genomic selection (GS) is commonly used in livestock and increasingly in plant breeding. Relying on phenotypes and genotypes of a reference population, GS allows performance prediction for young individuals having only genotypes. This is expected to achieve fast high genetic gain but with a potential loss of genetic diversity. Existing methods to conserve genetic diversity depend mostly on the choice of the breeding individuals. In this study, we propose a modification of the reference population composition to mitigate diversity loss. Since the high cost of phenotyping is the limiting factor for GS, our findings are of major economic interest. This study aims to answer the following questions: how would decisions on the reference population affect the breeding population, and how to best select individuals to update the reference population and balance maximizing genetic gain and minimizing loss of genetic diversity? We investigated three updating strategies for the reference population: random, truncation, and optimal contribution (OC) strategies. OC maximizes genetic merit for a fixed loss of genetic diversity. A French Montbéliarde dairy cattle population with 50K SNP chip genotypes and simulations over 10 generations were used to compare these different strategies using milk production as the trait of interest. Candidates were selected to update the reference population. Prediction bias and both genetic merit and diversity were measured. Changes in the reference population composition slightly affected the breeding population. Optimal contribution strategy appeared to be an acceptable compromise to maintain both genetic gain and diversity in the reference and the breeding populations.

The hypothesis of isolation by distance (IBD) predicts that genetic differentiation between populations increases with geographic distance. However, gene flow is governed by numerous factors and the correlation between genetic differentiation and geographic distance is never simply linear. In this study, we analyze the interaction between the effects of geographic distance and of wild or domesticated status of the host plant on genetic differentiation in the bean beetle Acanthoscelides obvelatus. Geographic distance explained most of the among-population genetic differentiation. However, IBD varied depending on the kind of population pairs for which the correlation between genetic differentiation and geographic distance was examined. Whereas pairs of beetle populations associated with wild beans showed significant IBD (P< 10−4), no IBD was found when pairs of beetle populations on domesticated beans were examined (P = 0.2992). This latter result can be explained by long-distance migrations of beetles on domesticated plants resulting from human exchanges of bean seeds. Beetle populations associated with wild beans were also significantly more likely than those on domesticated plants to contain rare alleles. However, at the population level, beetles on cultivated beans were similar in allelic richness to those on wild beans. This similarity in allelic richness combined with differences in other aspects of the genetic diversity (i.e., IBD, allelic diversity) is compatible with strongly contrasting effects of migration and drift. This novel indirect effect of human actions on gene flow of a serious pest of a domesticated plant has important implications for the spread of new adaptations such as resistance to pesticides.

The hypothesis of isolation by distance (IBD) predicts that genetic differentiation between populations increases with geographic distance. However, gene flow is governed by numerous factors and the correlation between genetic differentiation and geographic distance is never simply linear. In this study, we analyze the interaction between the effects of geographic distance and of wild or domesticated status of the host plant on genetic differentiation in the bean beetle Acanthoscelides obvelatus. Geographic distance explained most of the among-population genetic differentiation. However, IBD varied depending on the kind of population pairs for which the correlation between genetic differentiation and geographic distance was examined. Whereas pairs of beetle populations associated with wild beans showed significant IBD (P< 10−4), no IBD was found when pairs of beetle populations on domesticated beans were examined (P = 0.2992). This latter result can be explained by long-distance migrations of beetles on domesticated plants resulting from human exchanges of bean seeds. Beetle populations associated with wild beans were also significantly more likely than those on domesticated plants to contain rare alleles. However, at the population level, beetles on cultivated beans were similar in allelic richness to those on wild beans. This similarity in allelic richness combined with differences in other aspects of the genetic diversity (i.e., IBD, allelic diversity) is compatible with strongly contrasting effects of migration and drift. This novel indirect effect of human actions on gene flow of a serious pest of a domesticated plant has important implications for the spread of new adaptations such as resistance to pesticides.