Keynote: Agaves and Humans – An Affair for the Ages

Researchers have long recognized the importance of agaves to Mesoamerica and its cultures, the plants providing food, fiber and beverage. However, their significance to these cultures has overshadowed and distorted the plants’ role for Indigenous Peoples north of the U.S. – Mexico border. Pre-Columbian farmers grew no less than six and possibly as many as eight or more domesticated agaves in Arizona dating to at least A.D. 600. Because of their longevity and primarily asexual reproduction, relict agave clones have persisted in the landscape to the present, providing an opportunity to study pre-Columbian nutrition, trade, migration and agricultural practices, virtually unchanged since they were last cultivated within a prehistoric cultural context. At least four may have originated in today’s Arizona, suggesting this area as a secondary center of domestication.  Such findings underscore the importance of drought and heat adapted crops and crop wild relatives in the Sonoran Desert and other arid and semi-arid regions, where today’s climate crisis is especially impactful.  Plants, including agaves and cacti, and Indigenous People have co-adapted remarkably to living in the culturally and biologically diverse Sonoran Desert for millennia. Learning from this mutual relationship can help us meet challenges we are now facing.