Bamako, Mali
July 13, 2009
Source:
SciDevNet
by Bandé Mousa Sissoko
Farmers in
six African countries — Burkina Faso, Chad,
Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone — may
be unable to grow maize by 2050, researchers
have predicted.
Using
historical climate data, maps of crop
cultivation and climate models taken from
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change Fourth Assessment Report, they found
that by 2050 growing seasons in Africa will
be hotter than almost all countries on the
continent have ever experienced — even if
carbon emissions are dramatically reduced.
The
research, published last month (4 June) in
Global Environmental Change,
compared the projected climates with present
conditions and found that most countries
will experience conditions similar to those
existing now in other nations. For example,
Lesotho — which has one of the continent's
coolest climates — could turn to the maize
varieties being cultivated in Mali, one of
Africa's hottest countries.
But six of
Africa's hottest countries, most of which
are in the Sahel region, may have nowhere to
turn as few countries currently experience
their extremely hot projected climates. The
researchers warn that these countries may
therefore need to switch to more heat- and
drought-tolerant crops such as sorghum and
millet.
David
Lobell, one of the authors and a senior
researcher at the Program on Food Security
and Environment of the US-based Stanford
University, told SciDev.Net that these
countries need to work together to grow
seeds in a productive way.
He suggests
that Mali, for example, should try to
diversify into millet and sorghum and avoid
depending on other countries for seeds.
Farmers should also be educated about the
benefits of sorghum and millet, and Mali
must share genetic resources with other
countries, he adds.
But decades
of neglect of African crop genebanks means
that breeders today don't have access to the
varieties of Africa's staple crops — maize,
millet and sorghum — that are likely to be
most helpful in allowing farmers to adapt to
climate change, the researchers say.
"The
genebank collections from many areas that
are likely to have the widest range of
diversity are either incomplete or
non-existent," says Luigi Guarino, senior
science coordinator at the Global Crop
Diversity Trust and co-author of the paper.
Guarino
suggests collaborating on sourcing and using
novel genetic material from Africa and
further afield to breed better varieties.
"They could look in national and, even
better, international genebank collections
for potential suitable material."
Link to abstract in Global Environmental
Change
