Orphan crops for future food security
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Ó Indian Academy of Sciences (0123456789().,-volV) (0123456789().,-volV)
Review Orphan crops for future food security BRIJESH KUMAR1 and PURVA BHALOTHIA2* 1
Plant Stress Biology Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India 2
Birla Institute of Scientific Research (BISR), Jaipur, Rajasthan, India *Corresponding author (Email, [email protected]) MS received 17 May 2020; accepted 28 September 2020
Climate change, along with current agricultural practices, is going to pose a significant challenge for future food security, especially in developing countries. Orphan crops can help mitigate this threat due to their inherent properties of stress tolerance and nutrition content. Industrialization of agriculture has left these minor crops behind in terms of domestication. As a result, the potential of these crops is underutilized. These crops can be a game-changer in the long term if necessary steps are taken to improve the quality as well as quantity of yield. Concerted efforts by many groups around the world have been taken for research and development of these crops. Besides, the unique properties of these crops have caught the media attention, which hails these crops as superfoods. Favourable government policies to promote these crops can help in the large-scale adoption of these crops by the farming community. Besides, the stress-resilience of these crops can help boost the sustainability of agriculture and ensure food security for future generations. Keywords. agriculture
Food security; genetic resource; healthy food; orphan crops; stress tolerance; sustainable
1. Introduction Humanity is facing immense problems with the exponential increase in the population and shortage of land. As a result, there is a significant threat to food security in the future. According to estimates, food production must be increased by at least 70% by the year 2050 to support the increasing world population (Godfray et al. 2010a). Unpredictable climate change has caused frequent stresses, such as drought, salinity and extremes of temperature, making it challenging for growers. Apart from these abiotic stresses, plants also face challenges from biotic stresses, such as bacteria, fungus, viruses, nematodes, etc. Thus, all these biotic and abiotic stresses lead to huge yield loss (Godfray et al. 2010b). Hence, there is an utmost need to focus on plant varieties with improved stress tolerance, yield and nutrition to ensure food security for the coming generations.
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Crop production is governed by various factors, which can be manipulated to boost productivity. The arable land is limited due to increasing urbanization and lack of water for irrigation. Intensification of agriculture is another option, which can lead to increased yields per unit of land. The Green Revolution was the result of agricultural intensification which witnessed large-scale use of fertilizers and pesticides, agricultural machines and genetically enhanced highyielding varieties (Pingali 2012). Cerea
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