Rome, Italy
May 22, 2009
Amid predictions that climate
change will create hostile growing conditions, partners look to
crop collections for future varieties
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust announced today numerous new grant awards to support
scientists to explore the millions of seed samples maintained in
1,500 crop genebanks around the world. They will search for
biodiversity critically needed to protect food production from
the ravages of climate change.
The awards support a wide range of innovative projects,
including a search in Southeast Asia and the Pacific for bananas
that are resistant to banana streak virus, which will likely
become more problematic with climate change; transferring traits
from a wild to a cultivated variety of potato that convey
resistance to a soil-borne pathogen responsible for bacterial
wilt; a search for novel traits with tolerance to heat and
drought stresses in Chilean maize crop collections; a project in
India to find pearl millet that can handle scorching
temperatures; and a project to increase the ability of maize to
cope with erratic rains, while increasing its nutritional
quality for small-scale, marginal farms in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Working together with the Trust in the effort will be the
Generation Challenge
Programme (GCP) of the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s
Global Partnership Initiative
for Plant Breeding Capacity (GIPB).
“We want to support scientists to probe crop genebanks for
natural traits that will allow farm production to stay one step
ahead of climate change,” said Cary Fowler, Executive Director
of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. “The data are now clear that
rising temperatures, radically altered precipitation patterns
and new infestations of plant pests are on the near horizon, and
we need to look to our crop genebanks for the traits that will
help us avoid a crisis.”
By the turn of the century, scientists now predict that
temperatures during growing seasons in the tropics and
subtropics are destined to be even hotter than what are now
considered extreme temperatures. New data also show steadily
dryer conditions in many regions. But there is widespread
concern, particularly in the developing world, that plant
breeding efforts are not moving fast enough to develop new
varieties that can withstand these stresses and enable farmers
to avoid steep drops in food production.
The Trust, in partnership with the UN Foundation and with the
support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is supporting
work to probe crop collections for critical traits such as
drought or heat tolerance. GCP is offering funding for
scientists to use molecular mapping technology to identify the
“DNA fingerprint” of the crop samples. The UN Food and
Agriculture Organization’s Global Partnership Initiative for
Plant Breeding Capacity (GIPB) is supporting efforts by plant
breeders to use such information to breed new, high-yielding
varieties adapted to conditions on the ground.
“It’s not enough to simply identify the trait,” said Humberto
Gómez, the Coordinator of GCP’s Genotyping Support Service. “To
produce a viable crop variety, one has to go further and also
conduct molecular analysis and then the breeding work. This work
can take up to ten years from the point of discovering the trait
to having a new variety actually growing in a farmer’s field.
We’re seeking to speed up that process by supporting breeders in
the developing world.”
“Together, these efforts will increase our ability to be ready
for climate change,” said Elcio Guimaraes of GIPB. “It will be
much easier for young plant breeders to identify and use
promising traits that arm crops against climate change.”
The grants cover projects initiated by scientists in Africa,
Asia, the Americas and Europe. They involve a range of crops and
seek a variety of important plant traits. For example:
- Scientists in Portugal and
Angola are jointly investigating the ability of 100 samples
of native or “landrace” wheat varieties and 15 modern
varieties to withstand high temperature and drought.
- Scientists in India are
exploring a collection of pearl millet in search of traits
that will allow this important cereal grain, which
originated in Africa but has been grown in India for
thousands of years, to remain viable as climate change
brings hotter temperatures.
- Scientists based in the
United States are analyzing sorghum germplasm maintained by
the India-based International Crops Research Institute for
the Semi-Arid Tropics for resistance against multiple
diseases, including downy mildew and head smut funguses. The
work is being carried out by researchers based in
Texas, where sorghum production generates $1 billion
annually.
- A project will make use of
conventional plant breeding and molecular markers to
increase the ability of maize to cope with erratic rains,
while increasing its nutritional quality for small-scale,
marginal farms in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- The African Centre for
Crop Improvement will build on previous advances in
improving nutritional quality in maize, by adding in drought
tolerance so that new varieties can benefit the most
vulnerable growers in marginal areas
- In the Philippines, the
Institute of Plant Breeding will widen the genetic base
available for improving bananas by researching ways to
eliminate the deleterious effects of viruses that have
become integrated into the genetic make-up of some of the
wild relatives that can contribute valuable traits to the
cultivated species.
The mission of the Global Crop
Diversity Trust is to ensure the conservation and availability
of crop diversity for food security worldwide. Although crop
diversity is fundamental to fighting hunger and to the very
future of agriculture, funding is unreliable and diversity is
being lost. The Trust is the only organization working worldwide
to solve this problem, and has already raised over $US150
million. For further information, please visit:
www.croptrust.org.
The Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) is a broad and true
network of partners from advanced research institutes and
national agricultural research programmes collectively working
to improve crop productivity in drought-prone environments. GCP
partners draw on plant diversity and new technologies to improve
crops with desired traits, focusing on drought tolerance.
Through this wide range of partners, GCP links basic science
with applied research and helps to weave an effective and
interactive community of crop researchers at both global and
regional level. GCP is a programme of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). For further
information, please visit:
http://www.generationcp.org/.
For further information on the latest projects, please visit:
http://www.generationcp.org/sp5/?da=09142800.
The Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity
Building (GIPB) is a multi-party initiative of knowledge
institutions around the world that have a track record in
supporting agricultural research and development, working in
partnership with country programmes committed to developing
stronger and effective plant breeding capacity. As a partnership
of stakeholders from the public, private and civil society
sectors, the initiative is aimed at catalyzing and supporting
national, regional and global action among relevant
international organizations, foundations, universities and
research institutes, corporate and business sector, civil
society associations, and national and regional bodies. For
further information, please visit:
http://km.fao.org/gipb/.
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