Rice is the most important staple food crop, contributes massively to global warming by releasing methane as it is cultivated. According to a study published in May, global warming risks shifting nearly a third of agricultural production outside it's ideal climate for cultivation.
From a bowl of rice to a cup of coffee, experts say the foods we take for granted could become much scarcer unless we can make them resistant to climate change.
The international Potato Center predicts a 32% drop in harvests of potatoes and sweet potatoes by 2060 due to climate change, while some estimates say coffee growers will lose half of adapted lands before 2050. One potential resource is gene banks, like the Kew Millennium Seed Bank which has nearly 40,000 species of wild plants.
In a survey of four Central American countries, one in four plants analysed was threatened with extinction, including 70 wild species connected to major cultivated crops like corn and squash. And the race isn't over once they've been harvested. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, while the planet is home to some 50,000 edible plants, just three of them- Rice, Maize and Wheat to provide 60 % of the world's food energy intake.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust collected over 4600 samples from 371 wild cousins of 28 key crops between 2013 and 2018, including wheat, Rice, Sweet Potatoes, Bananas and Apples.
Botanist Aaron Davis works at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens that partners with Crop Trust. With his colleagues, he discovered a wild species of Coffee in Sierra Leone that is more resistant to climate change than the widely harvested Arabica. And he says they found it just in time. "If we had gone to Sierra Leone in 10 years, it would probably have been extinct,".
For more than 10000 years Humans have been using selective breeding to adapt fruits and vegetables to specific growing conditions that today are changing at an alarming rate. And the same breeding that has made crops profitable has also made them vulnerable to rising temperatures, drought, heavy rains, new blights or plagues of insects. " When you select for the best traits you lose certain types of genes, Benjamin killian, project lead for the crop wild Relatives Project at Crop Trust, told AFP. "We lost genetic diversity during domestication history, therefore the potential of the elite crops to further adapt to the future to climate change and other challenges is limited."
