Israeli scientists are creating a gene bank from the seeds of local wild crops, some of which have survived for thousands of years since the birth of agriculture.
In Short
By India Today Web Desk: With the world facing extreme weather events more frequently and more intensely, the biggest threat remains to the global food supply. With crops yet to become climate resistant and increasing heatwaves and floods affecting yields across the world, scientists are looking back to the past to find the way for the future.
Israeli scientists are creating a gene bank from the seeds of local wild crops, some of which have survived for thousands of years since the birth of agriculture. The gene bank could help farmers deal with a harsher climate in the coming decades as they hope DNA could be key to future crops.
Scientists have collected seeds from a number of plants recently spotted, including a variety of water mints, that will be frozen and stored at the Israel Plant Gene Bank at the Volcani Institute, the national agricultural R&D center. They are going through the country in search of varieties of wheat, barley, and other wild crops.
The idea is to save their genetic makeup and study their DNA before they are lost to expanding deserts and urbanization as the climate warms. Scientists want to harness the resilient characteristics of these wild plants to genetically modify farmed crops so they better withstand drought or disease.
“The plants here are very unique. They are the ancestors of many of the cultivated plants used today,” botanist Alon Singer told Reuters.
Scientists have already engineered a variety of wheat with an ultra-short lifecycle, which could become an option in a hotter climate with reduced growing seasons.
Tens of thousands of types of seeds are stored in the gene bank. It may be smaller than some collections elsewhere in the world but the gene pool here is unique, coming from an area that was part of the Fertile Crescent region known as the birthplace of crop cultivation.
“This is where agriculture started about 10,000 years ago. Species that were domesticated here are still in the wild, adapting over the years to the changes in the environment,” said Einav Mayzlish-Gati, director of the gene bank.
The World Bank warns that global agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Negative effects, it said, are already being felt with hotter temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events, and invasive crops and pests. Agriculture and global warming will be discussed by global leaders in Egypt on Saturday at COP27, the latest edition of the United Nations’ annual climate change summit.
News Source Link
