14 December 2010 | Marianna Keen

 

A global search to systematically find, catalogue and save genetic traits of essential food crops is being conducted to help farmers and strengthen future food security.

Global Crop Diversity Trust announced the search to save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea and other key food crops. The intention is to protect global food supplies against climate change, according to a press release issued on 10th December 2010.

"This project represents one of the most concrete steps taken to date to ensure that agriculture, and humanity, adapts to climate change. At a more fundamental level, the project also demonstrates the importance of biodiversity and genetic resources for human survival," said Erik Solheim, Minister of the Environment and International Development of Norway.

The plants contain essential traits that could be bred into crops to make them more versatile when faced with dramatic climate changes.

The initiative will work in partnership with national agricultural research institutes, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

"All our crops were originally developed from wild species – that's' how farming began" said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "But they were adapted from the plants best suited to the climates of the past. Climate change means we need to go back to the wild to find those relatives of our crops that can thrive in the climates of the future. We need to glean from them the traits that will enable modern crops to adapt to new, harsher and more demanding situations. And we need to do it while those plants can still be found," he said.

Crop wild relatives represent only a small proportion of the world's gene bank, yet their contribution to commercial agriculture is estimated at over US$100 billion per year. The preservation of genetic material has been a method utilised to overcome viruses.

In the 1970s, an outbreak of grassy stunt virus, which prevents the rice plant from flowering and producing grain, decimated rice harvests across Asia. Scientists from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) found a wild relative of the plant, which was resistant to the disease, in India, and was thus incorporated in new varieties.

Norway is pledging the initial budget of US$50 million to fund the work on 23 global crops, including alfalfa, bambara groundnut, banana, barley, bean, fava bean, chickpea, cowpea, rye, rice and sunflower.

According to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, although much research and incorporation has been done to date, the plants have never been comprehensively collected or preserved. Many valuable traits are currently unavailable and many are at risk of being lost forever due to climate change. The extensive work to protect the genes is scheduled to take 10 years. This time period will ensure that collected seed can be grown and crossed with existing breeding lines, to see if the valued traits can be introduced effectively into domestic plants.

"Diversity equals resilience in the biological world, which is why the project is vital to the survival of agriculture," said Paul Smith, Director of the Millenium Seed Bank at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK. According to Kew, one fifth of the world's plants are threatened with extinction.

The challenge on agriculture is likely to worsen and unless something is done to provide the best genetic material for present and future climatic conditions, concerns for providing food for most affected nations will increase.Yields for maize in Southern Africa, an essential crop in a nation already suffering from severe hunger, are estimated to drop by 30 per cent within just 20 years.

"We are extremely excited to support a project that will help insure our common future, and look forward to other donors adding their support so that more crops can be included," said Solheim. Norway previously showed its dedication to conserving global plant biodiversity when in 2008 it built the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, offering a secure Arctic home for millions of seed samples collected from around the world.

According to the partners of the project, on average a new crop variety takes 7-10 years to breed, so it is essential for the work to start as soon as possible. "If we wait until the climate has changed, it will be too late. Delaying adaptation is short-sighted and the poor will pay the heaviest price," said Solheim.

Although no binding agreement was made in the 16th Conference of Parties which closed on Friday (10th December 2010), climate change is an increasingly pressing matter, particularly for the developing world. The Global Crop Diversity Trust will bring together climate change experts, biodiversity conservationists and agricultural scientists in the effort to improve food security for developing nations in light of the hunger threat.

Author: Marianna Keen | Climate Action

Image: Peter Blanchard/ Flickr

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