Emergence and diffusion of agriculture in the Congo Basin rainforests – RainForStory

The Congo Basin holds the world's second largest continuous rainforest, after the Amazon Basin, and contains about 70 % of Africa’s forest cover. These forests are home to about 30 million people and support livelihoods for more than 75 million additional people who notably rely on local natural resources for food and health. Despite their importance, the emergence and diffusion of agriculture in Congo Basin rainforests remain largely undocumented. Our project, RainForStory, aims to decipher the history of development of agriculture in this region. Toward this aim, we will develop an original multidisciplinary approach involving palaeoecology, palaeoclimatology, archaeology, archaeobotany, and plant genetics. Specifically, our approach will aim to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of propagation and use of a set of culturally emblematic food plants relying on data acquired through a multidisciplinary approach. RainForStory will allow for the first time the collaboration of researchers from different disciplines and research laboratories (ISEM, CEREGE, PALOC, CEPAM, DIADE, as well as foreign researchers) who all present strong and independent expertise on the study of African rainforests and their people. In turn, this will provide a unique opportunity to develop an integrative answer to the question of the history of emergence and diffusion of rainforests from Central Africa. Understanding the history of agricultural emergence and diffusion in the region and the influence of past human management practices on the evolutionary history of crops will help to orient the conservation and sustainable management of local food plants, and more generally of forest genetic resources, which represent important food and commercial products to local people and are highly threatened by global change. By doing so, RainForStory will contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger) and 15 (life on land).