Global-warming resistant crops under development by researchers

Global-warming resistant crops under development by researchers

mongabay.com

December 4, 2006

Researchers at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) are working to develop climate-resilient agriculture to reduce the impact of global warming on food supplies. Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect the world’s poorest regions most dependent on agriculture for economic sustenance.

CIGAR is working to develop crops that can better withstand heat, salt, submergence or waterlogging, and drought as well as to promote “more efficient farming techniques to help poor farmers better use increasingly scarce water and fragile soil.” Further researchers are also looking for ways to use agriculture to reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

“The impacts of climate change on agriculture will add significantly to the development challenges of reducing poverty and ensuring sufficient food production for a growing population,” said Dr. Robert S. Zeigler, Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a CGIAR-supported research center. “The livelihoods of billions of people in developing countries, particularly those in the tropics, will be severely challenged as crop yields decline due to shorter growing seasons.”

“Anticipating and planning for climate change is imperative if farmers in poor countries are to avert forecast declines in yields of the world’s most important food crops,” said Dr. Louis V. Verchot, a climate change scientist with the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), a CGIAR-supported research center. “Yet, adaptation is not a substitute for reducing new and removing existing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere–our only long-term option.”

Rice in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett Butler.

The researchers say that rising temperatures will likely shift productive agriculture away from the tropics towards the poles and higher elevations leaving some of the world’s poorest regions at greater risk of crop failure and famine. For example, according to the a recent study by CGIAR, projected climate warming and changes in rainfall patterns will reduce growing periods by more than 20 percent in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Developing countries, which are already home to most of the world’s poor and malnourished people and have contributed relatively little to the causes of global warming, are going to bear the brunt of climate change and suffer most from its negative consequences,” said Dr. Verchot of the World Agroforestry Center.

“Poor countries are overwhelmingly dependent on natural resources, and, given their limited financial or institutional ability to adapt to profound change, they are severely at risk,” said Zeigler. “Helping poor farmers adapt to climate change will require a concerted international effort to improve crops, techniques of cultivation, and soil and water management.”

“The task ahead may well prove bigger and more complex than what we faced at the outset of the Green Revolution,” added Zeigler. “To feed a growing population, food production must be doubled over the next 25 years, but now poor countries must do so in harsh environments that climate change has rendered far less suitable to agriculture.”

CIGAR’s research centers are working on a number of agricultural issues as related to climate change:

Developing climate-ready crops: “Researchers are developing more reliable varieties of food crops capable of withstanding increased temperatures, drought, and flooding.”
More efficient use of resources: “Several CGIAR-supported centers are refining and introducing new and better methods for rainwater harvesting and storage, shifting to less thirsty crops and perfecting drip irrigation to deliver precise amounts of water when and where it is most needed. Conservation farming techniques refined by CGIAR researchers, such as low- or zero-tilling in which farmers refrain from plowing their fields, help to increase the water-holding capacity of soils and infiltration so more water is available for the crop, moderate soil temperatures, and have the added benefit of preventing carbon from escaping from the soil into the atmosphere.”
Managing greenhouse gases: The CGIAR-supported centers are working with farmers to develop and test innovative practices capable of contributing to the net reduction of atmospheric carbon on three fronts: stanching the loss of carbon from agricultural systems; returning carbon from the atmosphere to plants and soils; and better managing forests and soils.

This article is based on a news release from CIGAR.