This archive report was first published on 16 October 2019.
Conserving Crop Wild Relatives is Key to Enhanced Productivity ¶
As the world grapples with the challenges of climate change, land degradation, and soil destitution, agricultural productivity and food production continue to face a sustained onslaught of challenges. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), agricultural production and crop yields could decline by two percent every decade due to the negative impacts of climate change.
Despite severe forecasts beyond 2050, the rapidly increasing human population in the coming years will require that global food production increases by up to 70 percent. This will lead to an increase in demand for crop production to guarantee food security for the growing population.
Plant breeders have turned to the mostly unexploited gene pool of genetic diversity within crop wild relatives (CWRs) as these are key to tackling the looming catastrophe. These wild species of the tamed plants we grow are a genetic treasure trove of diversity for developing the desirable qualities such as resilience and robustness that our tamed plants require to survive and thrive.
Scientists at Bioversity International have identified CWRs as a source of genes for addressing different stresses in plants as well as addressing other breeding goals including increased crop yield and quality improvement. They contain a rich supply of resistance genes for both biotic and abiotic plant stresses and are mainly made up of both crop ancestors and other interrelated species, which have been used to improve crops for years.
“From these, farmers are able to get quality seeds for crop cultivation and also livestock due to the prospect of breeding enhanced varieties from agro-biodiversity. Nutritive food security is ensured, the farm ecosystem and soils are revitalised, farmers get access to varied highly tolerant crops for cultivation, and hence are cushioned against crop failures, and their intercultivation time and again control pests and diseases and addresses effects of climate change,” says Céline Termote, a scientist at Bioversity International.
However, the conservation of CWRs is threatened by factors including effects of habitat destruction, nutrient enrichment, and climate change, which are adversely impacting on these wild plant species. Scientists are now calling for protection of the Plant Genetic Resources (PGR), in which falls the CWRs, as they have an important role to play in ensuring food and nutrition security.
Joseph Ireri, a principal scientist at the Plant Genetic Resource Centre, which is based at Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation’s (Kalro) Genetic Resources Research Institute (GeRRI), says that the first step required to improve CWRs’ conservation is to identify which CWR taxon requires enhanced protection and the conditions to which it should be conserved against –pests, diseases, or adverse climate changes.
This can be done through creation of a CWR checklist and inventory, which consists of names of different taxa and their establishment within any geographical region. Once the priority CWR has been identified for any geographical area of study, it is then necessary to carry out a ‘gap analyses’ to examine the extent of current conservation efforts for priority taxa and make decisions as to where further conservation efforts are necessary to ensure the long-term persistence of populations and the genetic diversity within them, using both in-situ and ex-situ conservation approaches.
