Syria and Iraq conflicts threatening global food security

Global food security is being threatened by ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq, as scientists trying to conserve important food crops are unable to reach them due to violence in the Middle East.

Experts from the University of Birmingham in the UK have identified “hotspots” around the globe where wild crop relatives (species plant breeders used to develop new crop varieties that are more resistant to climate change) require protection to secure future global food resources.

The crops are most concentrated in the “Fertile Crescent” region, which arcs around the Arabian desert and includes Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Conflict in some of these countries is making conservation nearly impossible and Nigel Maxted, lead investigator from the University of Birmingham’s School of Biosciences in Britain, said: “It won’t necessarily speed up extinction of the species, but the problem is access. If Islamic State takes over an area, then we don’t have access to the (plant) material there.”

Two of the most important sites in the world for wild relatives of crops are located in war-torn Syria, according to Maxted. 

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) was forced to duplicate a globally unique collection of crop genetic resources that were kept at its gene bank in Aleppo, Syria, by shipping seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway where they will be stored safely.

The University of Birmingham has formed a partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to plan and implement effective conservation of crop wild relatives for the first time, and will store samples in gene banks as a back-up.

They plan to negotiate with governments in the Fertile Crescent region and to try to implement conservation in the hotspot areas.

Another challenge is that the crops are often concentrated in developing countries, which often lack the infrastructure and resources to conserve them properly and greater funding is needed for such efforts.

There is a growing risk to crops from climate change which is leading to rising demand from plant breeders for resilient traits that are found in wild relatives so conservation is becoming even more crucial.

Maxted said: “If we combine global population growth with the prospect of climate change decreasing crop yields by 2 per cent per decade, crop wild relatives may be one solution to this food security threat - but not if we don’t have access to them or the species are extinct.”