Global Project to Create Sustainable, Climate-Proof Food Crops
A new global project is screening food crops for useful traits that can be adapted for reversing the effects of climate change and boost their diversity and sustainable production.
This will involve the setting up of crop banks and seed vaults, so to speak, in developing countries that depend on staples such as corn and rice, to tap on their valuable ’sustainability traits’ as a way of conserving the diversity of the world’s food crops.
In attempts to boost food security, crops from banana to sweet potato will be screened to identify material that plant breeders can use to produce varieties adapted to conditions associated with climate change.
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For instance, crop researchers will try to grow important foods like cassava, taro and bananas under different stress conditions -such as high salinity or high temperature - to weed them of their presumed negative effects on the environment and also produce the best varieties suitable for both human and animal consumption.
The project, spearheaded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which identifies crop diversity as the biological foundation of agriculture, will screen seeds for natural resistance to extreme events, such as floods, droughts or temperature swings.
Cary Fowler, GCDT executive director, says: “Without crop diversity, agriculture cannot adapt to anything: pests, disease, climate change, drought, energy constraints … nothing. Our crops must produce more food, on the same amount of land, with less water, and more expensive energy.”
The Trust has previously warned that by 2050, if climate change continues on its current trajectory, world supplies of rice, corn, and wheat - sometimes called the Big Three because together they provide half of the planet’s food calories - could shrink dramatically.
Image Credit: Wharman at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
