Global Crop Diversity Trust to Find and Preserve Wild Relatives of Food Crops in Preparation for Climate Change

© 2010 Peter Free

 

28 December 2010

 

 

A few people are thinking ahead

 

Preparing for the effects of climate change is wise strategy.

 

The world is not going to act proactively and effectively to significantly slow anthropogenic climate change.  Most of the wealthier “us” take too much for granted regarding our dependence on the biosphere.

 

 

The thinkers-ahead are not national governments

 

Instead, an extra-governmental partnership is leading the crop-diversity conservation effort:

 

 

The Global Crop Diversity Trust has announced a major global search to systematically find, gather, catalogue, use, and save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea, and other essential food crops, in order to help protect global food supplies against the imminent threat of climate change, and strengthen future food security.

 

"All our crops were originally developed from wild species -- that's how farming began," explained Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

 

"But they were adapted from the plants best suited to the climates of the past. Climate change means we need to go back to the wild to find those relatives of our crops that can thrive in the climates of the future.

 

We need to glean from them the traits that will enable modern crops to adapt to new, harsher and more demanding situations. And we need to do it while those plants can still be found."

 

 

© 2010 Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: New Global Search to Save Endangered Crop Wild Relatives, ScienceDaily (27 December 2010) (paragraphs split)

 

 

Global Crop Diversity Trust described

Regarding its founders and mission:

 

The Global Crop Diversity Trust was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International, acting on behalf of the foremost international research organizations in this field (CGIAR). The Trust is currently hosted in Rome by FAO.

 

The Trust is a unique public-private partnership raising funds from individual, corporate and government donors to establish an endowment fund that will provide complete and continuous funding for key crop collections, in eternity.

 

 

© 2010 About Us, Global Crop Diversity Trust, http://www.croptrust.org/main/laboutus.php

 

 

 

Trust’s partners

Royal Botanic Gardens

Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

 

Norway

 

Norway has already pledged $50 million to the Trust’s effort.

 

Perhaps that athletically-oriented nation has better oxygenated brains than most.

 

 

Citation

 

 

Burness Communications, Global Program to Save Endangered Crop Wild Relatives, EurekAlert! (10 December 2010)