Crop diversity
Encyclopedia
Crop diversity is the variance in genetic
and phenotypic
characteristics of plants used in agriculture
. Crops may vary in seed size, branching pattern, in height, flower color, fruiting time, or flavor. They may also vary in less obvious characteristics such as their response to heat, cold or drought, or their ability to resist specific diseases and pests. It is possible to discover variation in almost every conceivable trait, including nutritional qualities, preparation and cooking techniques, and of course how a crop tastes. And if a trait cannot be found in the crop itself, it can often be found in a wild relative of the crop; a plant that has similar species that have not been farmed or used in agriculture, but exist in the wild.
Diversity in a crop can also result from different growing conditions: a crop growing in nutrient poor soil is likely to be shorter than a crop growing in more fertile soil. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, diversity of a harvested plant can be the result of genetic differences: a crop may have genes conferring early maturity or disease resistance. It is these heritable traits that are of special interest as they are passed on from generation to generation and collectively determine a crop’s overall characteristics and future potential. Through combining genes for different traits in desired combinations, plant breeders are able to develop new crop varieties to meet specific conditions. A new variety might, for example, be higher yielding, more disease resistant and have a longer shelf life than the varieties from which it was bred. The practical use of crop diversity goes back to early agricultural methods of crop rotation
and fallow fields, planting and harvesting one type of crop on a plot of land one year, and using a different crop the next based on differences in a plant's nutrient needs. Both farmers and scientists must continually draw on the irreplaceable resource of genetic diversity to ensure productive harvests, as genetic variability provides farmers resilience to pests and diseases and allows scientists access to a more diverse genetic bank. Diversification of harvests and maintaining wild biodiversity
in crop relatives influence many aspects of human and global interaction, being important for environmental and species sustainability
.
. Among the many threatened species are wild relatives of our crops – species that could contribute invaluable traits to future crop varieties. It has been estimated that 6% of wild relatives of cereal crops (wheat, maize
, rice, sorghum
etc.) are under threat as are 18% of legume species (the wild relatives of beans, peas and lentils) and 13% of species within the botanical family that includes potato, tomato, eggplant, and pepper.
The wise use of crop genetic diversity in plant breeding can contribute significantly to protecting the environment. Crop varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases can reduce the need for application of harmful pesticides more vigorous varieties can better compete with weed
s; reducing the need for applying herbicides as in the case study at Aarhus University in Denmark using more robust maize; drought resistant plants can help save water through reducing the need for irrigation
; deeper rooting varieties can help stabilize soils; and varieties that are more efficient in their use of nutrients require less fertilizer
. Most importantly, perhaps, productive agricultural systems reduce or eliminate the need to cut down forest or clear fragile lands to create more farmland for food production.
Fundamental to all of these potential solutions is crop diversity – the diversity that enables farmers and plant breeders to develop higher yielding, more productive varieties having improved quality characteristics required by farmers and desired by consumers. They can breed varieties better suited to particular processing methods or that store longer or that can be transported with less loss. They can produce varieties that resist pests and diseases and are drought tolerant, providing more protection against crop failure and better insulating poor farmers from risk. Agriculture’s part in fighting poverty is complex, but without the genetic diversity found within crops, it cannot fulfill its potential.
that allows for individuals and/or populations within that species to survive should a stressor or disturbance occur. In the case of agriculture, this is a tricky business to ensure, as seeds are planted under uniform conditions. For example, monocultural agriculture
potentially elicits low crop diversity (especially if the seeds were mass produced or cloned). It is possible that a single pest or disease could wipe out entire areas of a crop due to this uniformity. One of the more historically known examples of harvests that suffered from low crop diversity was the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1847.
One growing danger to present day agriculture is something called wheat rust: the name given from the reddish spores, it is a fungus that attaches to plants and breaks them down for food. A new form of the wheat disease - stem rust
, strain Ug99 - has spread from Africa
across to the Arabian Peninsula
. This development was summarized on the January 16th 2007 by the international research centers Borlaug Global Rust Initiative
and the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture
over 2 years of observation after its initial outbreak. The Ug99 stem rust has recently proven to be even more virulent than other forms. Observations from field trials in Kenya
showed that more than 85% of wheat samples, including cultivars from the major wheat producing regions in the world, have succumbed to the pest. This is a serious pest alert for one of the major food crops of the world. The key to overcome the threat is genetic resistance found in certain wheat varieties. As Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug
puts it: “We know what to do and how to do it. All we need are the financial resources, scientific cooperation and political will to contain this threat to world food security.”
Reports from Burundi
and Angola
warn of another looming food crisis partly caused by outbreaks of the African Cassava Mosaic Virus
(ACMD). Creating a “mosaic” of decay on the plants leaves, ACMD is responsible for the loss of a million tons of food each year. The Famine Early Warning Network of USAID reports from Angola that pockets of food insecurity exist in a number of districts partly due to the impacts of mosaic virus on the cassava
crop. Likewise FAO
(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) has warned about food insecurity in north and east central Burundi and one of the factors causing the precarious situation is declining yam harvests and the losses of cassava crops to the mosaic virus. CMD also affects people already exposed to malnutrition and with limited coping mechanisms. CMD continues to be prevalent in all the main cassava-growing areas in the Great Lakes region of east Africa, causing between 20 and 90 percent crop losses in the Congo
. Breeders and relief agencies work together to fight the disease, and the FAO emergency relief and rehabilitation program is engaged in a project to assist vulnerable returnee populations in the African Great Lakes
Region through mass propagation and distribution of CMD resistant or highly tolerant cassava planting materials.
A well known occurrence of disease susceptibility in crops lacking diversity concerns the Gros Michel
, a seedless banana that saw world marketing in the 1940s. As the market demand became high for this particular species, growers and farmers of the Gros Michel banana began to use this species almost exclusively. Genetically, these bananas are duplicates of every other in their species due to its self-pollinating reproductive style, and because of this lack of genetic diversity, are now virtually extinct due to a single fungus; Panama Disease
. This fungus (also known as Fusarium wilt), which infected Gros Michel banana crops in the 1950s, completely wiped out the Gros Michel as the predecessor to the current, and most popular, banana on the market: the Cavendish
.
), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (ITTA), the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, and the International Network for Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP) are a few of the most prominent. Members of the United Nations, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 at Johannesburg
, said that crop diversity is in danger of being lost if measures are not taken.
One such step taken in the action against the loss of biodiversity among crops is called gene banking. There are a number of organizations that enlist teams of local farmers to grow native varieties, particularly those that are threatened by extinction due to lack of modern-day use. There are also local, national and international efforts to preserve agricultural genetic resources through ex situ (off-site) methods such as seed and sperm banks for further research and/or crop breeding. Some of the major germplasm
storage efforts include:
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
and phenotypic
Phenotype
A phenotype is an organism's observable characteristics or traits: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior...
characteristics of plants used in agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. Crops may vary in seed size, branching pattern, in height, flower color, fruiting time, or flavor. They may also vary in less obvious characteristics such as their response to heat, cold or drought, or their ability to resist specific diseases and pests. It is possible to discover variation in almost every conceivable trait, including nutritional qualities, preparation and cooking techniques, and of course how a crop tastes. And if a trait cannot be found in the crop itself, it can often be found in a wild relative of the crop; a plant that has similar species that have not been farmed or used in agriculture, but exist in the wild.
Diversity in a crop can also result from different growing conditions: a crop growing in nutrient poor soil is likely to be shorter than a crop growing in more fertile soil. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, diversity of a harvested plant can be the result of genetic differences: a crop may have genes conferring early maturity or disease resistance. It is these heritable traits that are of special interest as they are passed on from generation to generation and collectively determine a crop’s overall characteristics and future potential. Through combining genes for different traits in desired combinations, plant breeders are able to develop new crop varieties to meet specific conditions. A new variety might, for example, be higher yielding, more disease resistant and have a longer shelf life than the varieties from which it was bred. The practical use of crop diversity goes back to early agricultural methods of crop rotation
Crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons.Crop rotation confers various benefits to the soil. A traditional element of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals...
and fallow fields, planting and harvesting one type of crop on a plot of land one year, and using a different crop the next based on differences in a plant's nutrient needs. Both farmers and scientists must continually draw on the irreplaceable resource of genetic diversity to ensure productive harvests, as genetic variability provides farmers resilience to pests and diseases and allows scientists access to a more diverse genetic bank. Diversification of harvests and maintaining wild biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
in crop relatives influence many aspects of human and global interaction, being important for environmental and species sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
.
Benefits to the environment
The loss of biodiversity is considered one of today’s most serious environmental concerns by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. According to some estimates, if current trends persist, as many as half of all plant species could face extinctionExtinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
. Among the many threatened species are wild relatives of our crops – species that could contribute invaluable traits to future crop varieties. It has been estimated that 6% of wild relatives of cereal crops (wheat, maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
, rice, sorghum
Sorghum
Sorghum is a genus of numerous species of grasses, one of which is raised for grain and many of which are used as fodder plants either cultivated or as part of pasture. The plants are cultivated in warmer climates worldwide. Species are native to tropical and subtropical regions of all continents...
etc.) are under threat as are 18% of legume species (the wild relatives of beans, peas and lentils) and 13% of species within the botanical family that includes potato, tomato, eggplant, and pepper.
The wise use of crop genetic diversity in plant breeding can contribute significantly to protecting the environment. Crop varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases can reduce the need for application of harmful pesticides more vigorous varieties can better compete with weed
Weed
A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, especially farm fields and gardens, but also lawns, parks, woods, and other areas. More specifically, the term is often used to...
s; reducing the need for applying herbicides as in the case study at Aarhus University in Denmark using more robust maize; drought resistant plants can help save water through reducing the need for irrigation
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
; deeper rooting varieties can help stabilize soils; and varieties that are more efficient in their use of nutrients require less fertilizer
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...
. Most importantly, perhaps, productive agricultural systems reduce or eliminate the need to cut down forest or clear fragile lands to create more farmland for food production.
Crop diversity and the economy
Agriculture is the economic foundation of most countries, and for developing countries the most likely source of economic growth. Growth is most rapid where agricultural productivity has risen the most, and the reverse is also true. Growth in agriculture, although beneficial for the wider economy, benefits the poor most, and by providing affordable food these benefits extend beyond the 70% of the world’s poorest people who live in rural areas and for whose livelihoods agriculture remains central. Ensuring agriculture is able to play this fundamental role requires a range of improvements including: the growing of higher value crops, promoting value-adding activities through, for example, improved processing, expanding access to markets, and lowering food prices through increasing production, processing and marketing efficiency, particularly for subsistence and very low income farming families.Fundamental to all of these potential solutions is crop diversity – the diversity that enables farmers and plant breeders to develop higher yielding, more productive varieties having improved quality characteristics required by farmers and desired by consumers. They can breed varieties better suited to particular processing methods or that store longer or that can be transported with less loss. They can produce varieties that resist pests and diseases and are drought tolerant, providing more protection against crop failure and better insulating poor farmers from risk. Agriculture’s part in fighting poverty is complex, but without the genetic diversity found within crops, it cannot fulfill its potential.
Disease threats to crops with low genetic diversity
One particular threat to mass producing plants for harvest is their susceptibility to diseases. Generally speaking, a species has a range of genetic variabilityGenetic variability
Genetic variability is a measure of the tendency of individual genotypes in a population to vary from one another. Variability is different from genetic diversity, which is the amount of variation seen in a particular population. The variability of a trait describes how much that trait tends to...
that allows for individuals and/or populations within that species to survive should a stressor or disturbance occur. In the case of agriculture, this is a tricky business to ensure, as seeds are planted under uniform conditions. For example, monocultural agriculture
Monoculture
Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area. It is also known as a way of farming practice of growing large stands of a single species. It is widely used in modern industrial agriculture and its implementation has allowed for large harvests from...
potentially elicits low crop diversity (especially if the seeds were mass produced or cloned). It is possible that a single pest or disease could wipe out entire areas of a crop due to this uniformity. One of the more historically known examples of harvests that suffered from low crop diversity was the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1847.
One growing danger to present day agriculture is something called wheat rust: the name given from the reddish spores, it is a fungus that attaches to plants and breaks them down for food. A new form of the wheat disease - stem rust
Stem rust
The stem, black or cereal rusts are caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis and are a significant disease affecting cereal crops. An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa, Asia and most recently into Middle East and is causing major concern due to...
, strain Ug99 - has spread from Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
across to the Arabian Peninsula
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
. This development was summarized on the January 16th 2007 by the international research centers Borlaug Global Rust Initiative
Borlaug Global Rust Initiative
The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative was founded in response to recommendations of a committee of international experts who met to consider a response to the threat the global food supply posed by the UG99 strain of wheat rust...
and the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
over 2 years of observation after its initial outbreak. The Ug99 stem rust has recently proven to be even more virulent than other forms. Observations from field trials in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
showed that more than 85% of wheat samples, including cultivars from the major wheat producing regions in the world, have succumbed to the pest. This is a serious pest alert for one of the major food crops of the world. The key to overcome the threat is genetic resistance found in certain wheat varieties. As Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug
Norman Borlaug
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution". Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal...
puts it: “We know what to do and how to do it. All we need are the financial resources, scientific cooperation and political will to contain this threat to world food security.”
Reports from Burundi
Burundi
Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...
and Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
warn of another looming food crisis partly caused by outbreaks of the African Cassava Mosaic Virus
African cassava mosaic virus
African cassava mosaic virus is a plant pathogenic virus of the family Geminiviridae that may cause either a mosaic appearance to plant leaves, or chlorosis, a loss of chlorophyll. In Manihot esculenta , a highly valuable African food crop, the virus is the only known plant virus for cassava and...
(ACMD). Creating a “mosaic” of decay on the plants leaves, ACMD is responsible for the loss of a million tons of food each year. The Famine Early Warning Network of USAID reports from Angola that pockets of food insecurity exist in a number of districts partly due to the impacts of mosaic virus on the cassava
Cassava
Cassava , also called yuca or manioc, a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae native to South America, is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates...
crop. Likewise FAO
Fão
Fão is a town in Esposende Municipality in Portugal....
(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) has warned about food insecurity in north and east central Burundi and one of the factors causing the precarious situation is declining yam harvests and the losses of cassava crops to the mosaic virus. CMD also affects people already exposed to malnutrition and with limited coping mechanisms. CMD continues to be prevalent in all the main cassava-growing areas in the Great Lakes region of east Africa, causing between 20 and 90 percent crop losses in the Congo
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
. Breeders and relief agencies work together to fight the disease, and the FAO emergency relief and rehabilitation program is engaged in a project to assist vulnerable returnee populations in the African Great Lakes
African Great Lakes
The African Great Lakes are a series of lakes and the Rift Valley lakes in and around the geographic Great Rift Valley formed by the action of the tectonic East African Rift on the continent of Africa...
Region through mass propagation and distribution of CMD resistant or highly tolerant cassava planting materials.
A well known occurrence of disease susceptibility in crops lacking diversity concerns the Gros Michel
Gros Michel
Gros Michel, often known as Big Mike, is an export cultivar of banana, and was until the 1950s the main variety exported to the United States.-Taxonomy:Gros Michel is a triploid cultivar of the wild banana Musa acuminata, belonging to the AAA group....
, a seedless banana that saw world marketing in the 1940s. As the market demand became high for this particular species, growers and farmers of the Gros Michel banana began to use this species almost exclusively. Genetically, these bananas are duplicates of every other in their species due to its self-pollinating reproductive style, and because of this lack of genetic diversity, are now virtually extinct due to a single fungus; Panama Disease
Fusarium oxysporum
Fusarium oxysporum Schlecht. as emended by Snyder and Hansen comprises all the species, varieties and forms recognized by Wollenweber and Reinking within an infrageneric grouping called section Elegans...
. This fungus (also known as Fusarium wilt), which infected Gros Michel banana crops in the 1950s, completely wiped out the Gros Michel as the predecessor to the current, and most popular, banana on the market: the Cavendish
Cavendish banana
The Dwarf Cavendish banana is a banana cultivar originally from Vietnam and China. It became the primary replacement for the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s after crops of the latter were devastated by the Panama disease. The name 'Dwarf Cavendish' is in reference to the height of the pseudostem,...
.
Organizations, technology and solutions
The implications of crop diversity are at both the local and world level, and numerous organizations are emerging with great global backing in response to this ideology. International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI – now known as Bioversity InternationalBioversity International
Bioversity International is one of 15 agricultural research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research . It is dedicated to the conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity to improve the livelihoods of poor people. The organization is highly...
), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (ITTA), the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, and the International Network for Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP) are a few of the most prominent. Members of the United Nations, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 at Johannesburg
Earth Summit 2002
The World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD or Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss sustainable development by the United Nations. WSSD gathered a number of leaders from business and non-governmental...
, said that crop diversity is in danger of being lost if measures are not taken.
One such step taken in the action against the loss of biodiversity among crops is called gene banking. There are a number of organizations that enlist teams of local farmers to grow native varieties, particularly those that are threatened by extinction due to lack of modern-day use. There are also local, national and international efforts to preserve agricultural genetic resources through ex situ (off-site) methods such as seed and sperm banks for further research and/or crop breeding. Some of the major germplasm
Germplasm
A germplasm is a collection of genetic resources for an organism. For plants, the germplasm may be stored as a seed collection or, for trees, in a nursery.-See also:*Germ plasm, the germ cell determining zone...
storage efforts include:
- The Global Crop Diversity TrustGlobal Crop Diversity TrustGlobal Crop Diversity Trust is an independent international organization which exists to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide...
is an independent international organisation which exists to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food securityFood securityFood security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past...
worldwide. It was established through a partnership between the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) acting through Bioversity International.
- The Consultative Group on International Agricultural ResearchConsultative Group on International Agricultural ResearchThe CGIAR is a strategic alliance that unites organizations involved in agricultural research for sustainable development with the donors that fund such work. These donors include governments of developing and industrialized countries, foundations and international and regional organizations...
(CGIAR) is a consortium of International Agriculture Research Centers (IARC) and others that each conduct research on and preserve germplasm from a particular crop or animal species. The CGIAR holds one of the world's largest off site collections of plant genetic resources in trust for the world community. It contains over 500,000 accessions of more than 3,000 crop, forage, and agro-forestryForestryForestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...
species. The collection includes farmers' varieties and improved varieties and, in substantial measure, the wild species from which those varieties were created.
- National germplasm storage centers including the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, India's National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR), the Taiwan Livestock Research InstituteTaiwan Livestock Research InstituteThe Taiwan Livestock Research Institute , in Sinhua, Taiwan, conducts research on animal breeding, physiology, nutrition and feeding techniques, animal waste treatment and utilization of byproducts, animal product processing, and forage crops...
, and the Australian Network of Plant Genetic Resource Centers.
- Organizations such as the World Resources InstituteWorld Resources InstituteThe World Resources Institute is an environmental think tank founded in 1982 based in Washington, D.C. in the United States.WRI is an independent, non-partisan and nonprofit organization with a staff of more than 100 scientists, economists, policy experts, business analysts, statistical analysts,...
(WRI) and the World Conservation UnionWorld Conservation UnionThe International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources is an international organization dedicated to finding "pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges." The organization publishes the IUCN Red List, compiling information from a network of...
(IUCN) are non-profit organizations that provide funding and other support to off site and on site conservation efforts. The wise use of crop genetic diversity in plant breeding and genetic modification can also contribute significantly to protecting the biodiversity in crops. Crop varieties with specifically modified genes grow resistances to pests and diseases. One successful example of this is the insertion of the gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensisBacillus thuringiensisBacillus thuringiensis is a Gram-positive, soil-dwelling bacterium, commonly used as a biological pesticide; alternatively, the Cry toxin may be extracted and used as a pesticide. B...
.
- Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a soil bacterium that produces a natural insecticideInsecticideAn insecticide is a pesticide used against insects. They include ovicides and larvicides used against the eggs and larvae of insects respectively. Insecticides are used in agriculture, medicine, industry and the household. The use of insecticides is believed to be one of the major factors behind...
toxinToxinA toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms; man-made substances created by artificial processes are thus excluded...
.
- Genes from Bt can be inserted into crop plants to make them capable of producing an insecticidal toxin and therefore a resistancePlant disease resistancePlant disease resistance is crucial to the reliable production of food, and it provides significant reductions in agricultural use of fuel, land, water and other inputs. There are numerous examples of devastating plant disease impacts , as well as recurrent severe plant disease issues...
to certain pests.
- There are no known adverse human health effects associated with Bt corn.
- Bt corn can adversely affect non-target insects if they are closely related to the target pest, as is the case with Monarch butterflyMonarch butterflyThe Monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly , in the family Nymphalidae. It is perhaps the best known of all North American butterflies. Since the 19th century, it has been found in New Zealand, and in Australia since 1871 where it is called the Wanderer...
. These adverse effects are considered minor, relative to those associated with the alternative of blanket insecticide applications.
See also
- Global Crop Diversity TrustGlobal Crop Diversity TrustGlobal Crop Diversity Trust is an independent international organization which exists to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide...
- Seeds of Survival, a smaller seed-saving NGO
- MonocultureMonocultureMonoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area. It is also known as a way of farming practice of growing large stands of a single species. It is widely used in modern industrial agriculture and its implementation has allowed for large harvests from...
- List of environmental issues
- Conservation (ethic)
- Globally Important Agricultural Heritage SystemsGlobally Important Agricultural Heritage SystemsGlobally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems , as defined by the FAO , are:Remarkable land use systems and landscapes which are rich in globally significant biological diversity evolving from the co-adaptation of a community with its environment and its needs and aspirations for sustainable...