Talk:Landrace

More on how this is seperate from a cultivar

Its not immediately clear how this term differs from Cultivar. Indeed it is a "cultivated variety", but seems to more be a "cultivated gene pool" than a lineage. 84.66.216.95 (talk) 08:40, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Cultivars are basically just plants that you've successfully and most likely intentionally selectively bred (although there seems to be a specific naming convention for cultivars, which seems to indicate they're more than just that; otherwise, any old farmer could select for something and call it whatever they wanted and still call it a cultivar). However, the term landrace is more specific, and it would seem it would be less likely to be intentional as often. As I understand it, a landrace involves long-term selection of plants, potentially over hundreds or thousands of years. However, the timeframe isn't so important as how they select by plant (possibly starting with any number of varieties; I imagine this tradition happened organically when people moved to one area from another and tried to grow their seeds from previous areas; others probably came from other areas and contributed their germplasm for selection), adapting it to a region (without particular thought to anywhere else). Selective breeding of cultivars doesn't particularly have to use plant-selection. It can also be fruit-selection. Selective breeding doesn't have to relate to a region at all. Cultivars can be bred quickly. Some might argue that landraces cannot be bred quickly, but some people do follow a more modern, faster definition of landrace breeding (this method doesn't seem to be discussed in the article, but Joseph Lofthouse popularized it in the vegetable world not too many years ago). ~2026-16375-75 (talk) 16:53, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

If you have WP:RS references that could improve this article, you are welcome to add them here on the talk page.Dialectric (talk) 16:50, 16 April 2026 (UTC)