ICARDA is working with a new crop-breeding strategy that will help ensure food security for the world's poorest. The objective is two-fold: to breed crops that will give greater yield stability, and thus food security, in the world's harshest environments; and to preserve, through use, the plant biodiversity that is the raw material of such crops.
The Center believes that this strategy is essential if we are to avoid crop failure and famine in the 21st century. And the strategy is described in the latest issue of ICARDA's general-audience publication, Caravan.
Scientists need this genetic material to breed new crops and the need is greater in the developing world than it is elsewhere.
This has been one of the lessons learned from the successes and failures of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when the production through breeding of high-yielding crops was used to feed the growing population of the developing world. In some ways, it achieved a great deal.
It did have two severe shortcomings. First of all, the gains made were often temporary, as many areas became dominated by one line of one crop, only to face complete crop failure through some pest or disease to which that particular line was vulnerable. Secondly, the new technologies often needed investment in fertilizer or manpower (known as inputs) that was beyond the smallholders who make up the bulk of the developing world's farmers.
So we have learned to harness indigenous biodiversity to crop breeding. This means that not only landraces-farmers' varieties of crops-but the wild relatives of the crops should be used to breed tough new improved lines that will be adapted to the stresses they will meet in farmers' fields. After all, both have been adapting for thousands of years!
But this raw material is threatened. It is estimated that up to 60,000 plant species (about 25% of the world's total) might be lost if the present rate of plant genetic erosion-through destruction of habitat, replacement of farmers' varieties (landraces), overgrazing and other factors- continues. This only hit the headlines with the 1992 UNCED conference in Rio, but scientists had in fact been quietly alarmed about it for some time.
Caravan describes how ICARDA is:
"Since UNCED in Rio, organizations like ICARDA have worked hard to spread the word that the store of genetic material used in agriculture is the most important area of biodiversity to human existence," says ICARDA's Director General, Prof. Adel El-Beltagy. "There have been numerous conferences and seminars, but that's not enough. It's time to stop talking, and act. ICARDA implements."
Note to editors: Caravan is published four times a year. It may be received free on request, and ICARDA encourages fair use of its material by media and others provided the source is quoted. If you would like to receive it, please contact the Head of Communication, Documentation and Information Services or e-mail to ICARDA@CGNET.COM.