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Climate Change and Agriculture: the nature and scale of the problem Geoff Hawtin Kew - Wakehurst Place 23 Nov 2015 Overview • The challenges • Climate change • Crop genetic improvement • Genetic diversity • Conserving and using genetic diversity The situation today • 870 million of the world’s 7.2 billion people are undernourished • 98% of these live in developing countries: 15% of the population undernourished • Poor nutrition is a major factor in at least 50% of the 10.9 million child deaths annually FAO 2012 Food security at risk In order to meet global demands, we will need 60-70% more food by 2050. World population 1950 - 2050 FEEDING THE WORLD in face of changing food habits Per capita consumption of livestock products One third of the world’s cereal supply is used for livestock feed Land degradation Increasing pressure on land Urbanization Alternative uses e.g. biofuel …and climate change World Resources Institute, 2013 o o • 2 - 4 C rise from 1990-2000 levels significant decrease in global agricultural productivity • Major losers: Southern Africa, Mediterranean, and Southern Asia • Winners: Northern Europe, North America, East Asia …, “What is an abnormally hot dry year now will be considered an abnormally cold and wet year in 2100” …although it not necessarily all bad, e.g. Rosenthal et al. (2012) report ~100 % increases in root yield under elevated CO2 and optimal management and the recent report: Carbon Dioxide – The good news I.M. Gloklany. Global Warning Policy Foundation, 2015 There is evidence that yields losses are occurring already: Estimated yields relative to those that would have occurred without climate change over the period 1980 - 2008 Lobell et al., Science, 2011 “….. the prevalence of crop pests will change and the frequency of shock pest events will increase,… Smith, 2015 Plant pests moving polewards 2.7 km per year (Bebber et al. 2013) By 2050 … • Potato tuber moth • additional 2.5 million ha • >4 generations per year Kroschel et al 2013 Natural Catastrophes Worldwide Climatological events (extreme temperature, drought, forest fire) Hydrological events (flood, mass water movement) Meteorological events (storm) Geophysical events (earthquake, tsunami ….) and agriculture itself is a major source of GHG Agriculture’s contribution to GHG emissions per country - 30% on average • 42 countries ≥ 50% • 89 countries ≥ 20% (CCAFS 2015) and what does this mean for future food production? Common beans in a +2ºC world Adapting to climate change through crop genetic improvement • >70% increase in global food production and >90% of UK cereal yield increases over past 25 years associated with better crop varieties • Improved varieties: a good option for smallholders • higher yields and greater resilience • adapted to changing climates and weather extremes: drought, heat, cold, waterlogging, salinity, etc… • able to tolerate or resist new pests and diseases • use inputs more efficiently • more nutritious and breeding varieties to help mitigate climate change through: • capturing more carbon: – e.g. perennial varieties; larger root systems • reducing nitrogen fertilizer needs (1/3 agric. GHG) – e.g. greater NUE; nitrogen-fixing cereals … • reducing CH4 emissions from paddy fields (accounts for 10% of total global emissions) – e.g. reduced flooding requirement • reducing CH4 emissions from cattle - e.g. lower fibre/higher polyphenol fodder • biofuel (“two-edged sword”) but much is possible with a large, diverse genepool (a) Historical (b) Future (no adaptation) (c) Future (+3 ºC adapted) Potential of tepary bean (P. acutifolius) x common bean (P. Vulgaris) in E. Africa. Steve Beebe, pers. comm. Genetic diversity: the basis of crop improvement Traditionally plant breeding has depended largely on intra-specific genetic diversity; the hundreds of thousands of varieties developed over thousands of years by farmers and plant breeders… .. and increasingly, crop wild relatives: • 60-70,000 CWR species (20% of all plant spp.) • Becoming increasingly valuable as a result of modern genomic, molecular, cytogenetic and other techniques, as a source of new genes/traits • potato: insect resistance (hairs) from S. berthaltii • rice: drought tolerance from O. longistaminata • Chickpea: heat tolerance from C. reticulatum but genetic diversity is threatened: on farmer’ fields as: – farmers switch to fewer crops and new varieties – consumer demands change Varieties lost in US since 1900: cabbage 95%, maize 91%, pea 94%, apple 86%, tomato 81% and in the wild as habitats are degraded or lost • • 19% Moncots threatened with extinction 14% of legumes threated with extinction Plants under pressure – a global assessment. IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. 2012 What can we do about it? A continuum of conservation approaches: • In situ (crop wild relatives): – wild protected areas – special management regimes • on-farm management of farmer varieties/landraces • ex situ – seed genebanks – field gene banks – in-vitro tissue culture banks – pollen, DNA libraries etc. • • Integrated/complementary approaches are vital. Ex situ collections are increasingly important for identifying and sequencing genes for specific traits … The International Agricultural Research Centres of the CGIAR Work in >150 countries 7,500 scientists Total 2014 budget: approx US$ 1 bn CGIAR collections, 2013 (number of samples per crop) – – – – – – – – – Banana: Bioversity 1,500 Barley: ICARDA 27,000 Beans: CIAT 36,000 Chickpea: ICARDA + ICRISAT 34,000 Forages: CIAT + ICARDA + ILRI 66,000 Maize: CIMMYT +IITA 28,000 Potato: CIP 7,000 Rice: AfricaRice + IRRI 129,000 Wheat: CIMMYT + ICARDA 167,000 TOTAL for all crops approx. 780,000 • >100,000 samples distributed per year • Samples are freely available upon request Millennium Seed Bank Partnership • Opened 2000, Wakehurst Place • Maximizes inter-specific rather than intra-specific genetic diversity • With partners in >80 countries, seeds from >13% of the world's plant species already conserved • As of August, 2015: 36,333 plant species and >2.1 billion seeds in storage • 2020 target: 25% of all bankable flowering plant species (70,000 spp.) safely conserved • Conservation and research critical for conservation and use of CWR Cornflower: Centaurea cyanus Svalbard Global Seed Vault • International safety back-up facility • Norwegian government initiative - with Global Crop Diversity Trust • On Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago: 78°N latitude, 700 miles from N. Pole • In permafrost, cooled to -18°C Global Crop Diversity Trust Svalbard cont… Global Crop Diversity Trust • Tunnel: 95 m. into the mountain • 3 vaults, each 10 x 6 x 27 m. • Capacity 4.5 m. samples (500 seeds/sample) • Currently >860,000 accessions of >4,500 spp. stored Arguably the world’s best insurance policy! Conclusions • Feeding the world in face of climate change is a key challenge for 21st Century • Crop genetic improvement offers one of the best hopes for meeting these challenges • Plant breeding depends on genetic diversity; increasingly that found in wild relatives • But this diversity is threatened and important efforts are underway to conserve it - for use today and long into the future Many thanks for your attention