Varshney, R K and Bohra, A and Roorkiwal, M and Barmukh, R and Cowling, W and Chitikineni, A and Lam, H M and Hickey, L T and Croser, J and Edwards, D and Farooq, M and Crossa, J and Weckwerth, W and Millar, A H and Kumar, A and Bevan, M W and Siddique, K H M (2021) Rapid delivery systems for future food security. Nature Biotechnology (TSI), 39. pp. 1179-1181. ISSN 1087-0156
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To the Editor — The current world population of 7.8 billion is predicted to reach 10 billion by 2057 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#pastfuture). Future access to affordable and healthy food will be challenging, with malnutrition already affecting one in three people worldwide. The agricultural sector currently provides livelihoods for 1.1 billion people and accounts for 26.7% of global employment (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS). However, our reliance on a small number of crop species for agricultural calorie production and depletion of land, soil, water and genetic resources, combined with extreme weather events and changing disease/pest dynamics, are already jeopardizing future food security. Climate change–induced reductions in the global yield of major crops (for example, rice, wheat, maize and soybean) are more pronounced in low-latitude regions and thus affect farmers in developing countries2. As is evident from temperate cereal crops, a robust seed system that delivers improved cultivars to replace old cultivars is a plausible approach to adapting agriculture to climate change. Here we provide an overview of how seed input supply systems and new production and harvesting technologies can generate increased incomes for developing world farmers and deliver better products to consumers. Crop improvement remains crucial to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) of ‘Zero Hunger: ending malnutrition and achieving food security by 2030’. It offers sustainable solutions for food production and food security by creating high-yielding, nutritious crops that can withstand emerging biotic and abiotic stresses. Innovative crop breeding techniques that accelerate the breeding cycle (for example, speed breeding), facilitate more precise genetic combinations (for example, genomic selection) and enable precise genetic changes (for example, genome editing) provide unprecedented opportunities for enhancing crop performance in controlled conditions and research plots. Translating crop productivity gains from experimental settings to real-world farming conditions requires improving equitable access to innovative technologies for all farmers and providing legislative, economical and practical support to ensure their adoption.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Center of Excellence in Genomics and Systems Biology |
| CRP: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Agricultural genetics, Developing world |
| Subjects: | Others > Agriculture Others > Genetics and Genomics |
| Depositing User: | Mr Nagaraju T |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2025 03:42 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Feb 2025 03:42 |
| URI: | http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/12974 |
| Official URL: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-01079-z |
| Projects: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Funders: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Acknowledgement: | The authors thank the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, The University of Western Australia, and Director General, ICRISAT for supporting an international workshop in Perth, Australia, to brainstorm topics in the article. R.K.V. acknowledges support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for undertaking research on seed delivery systems through the Tropical Legumes projects at ICRISAT. |
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