Adapting agriculture to a changing climate

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership has begun work to collect seed from the wild relatives of 26 crop plants as their genetic diversity may enable us to adapt agricultural crops to the climates of the future.

28 Nov 2011

Kew has embarked on a ten year project ‘Adapting agriculture to climate change’ in partnership with the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Adapting agriculture to accomodate a changing climate is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. The need for new crop varieties that can remain productive in the climates of the future is now widely recognised. It is less well known that our ability to breed these new varieties cannot be taken for granted.

Untapped diversity

The greatest source of untapped diversity, and in particular the richest source of diversity for adaptive characteristics needed to confront the challenges of climate change, is found in the wild relatives of our crops. Over the coming year Kew will use data from its herbarium and seed bank holdings to contribute to a gap analysis of crop wild relatives. It will then, through the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), collect these species and pass them to specialist pre-breeders.

Focus on 26 crops

The project focuses on the wild relatives of 26 crops covered by Annex 1 of the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The crops are alfalfa, apple, bambara groundnut, banana, barley, bean, carrot, chickpea, cowpea, eggplant, faba bean, finger millet, grasspea, lentil, oat, pea, pearl millet, pigeon pea, potato, rice, rye, sorghum, sunflower, sweet potato, vetch and wheat.

Item from Dr Ruth Eastwood (Crop Wild Relatives Project Co-ordinator, MSPB)
Kew Scientist 40 (autumn 2011)
 

More on this story

Kew News - Kew's Millennium Seed Bank joins campaign to protect global food supplies

Samara - Back to the Roots: Wild Genes for Food Security

Background

Kew Science Directory – Adapting agriculture to climate change

Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change – the role of crop wild relatives (summary statement of scientific meeting between agricultural and climate scientists, Bellagio, Sept 2010)

Global Crop Diversity Trust website

Related stories

Defra News - Saving useful plants through the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

Scientific American (2010) - Researchers Rush to Fill Noah's Ark Seed Bank While Politicians Bicker

BBC News - Bank on seeds : the world’s buffer

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