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Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture

Despite the dramatic increase in food production thanks to the Green Revolution, hunger is increasing among human populations around the world, affecting one in nine people. The negative environmental and social consequences of industrial monocrop agriculture is becoming evident, particularly in the...

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Autores principales: Pathirana, Ranjith, Carimi, Francesco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9370719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35956515
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11152038
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author Pathirana, Ranjith
Carimi, Francesco
author_facet Pathirana, Ranjith
Carimi, Francesco
author_sort Pathirana, Ranjith
collection PubMed
description Despite the dramatic increase in food production thanks to the Green Revolution, hunger is increasing among human populations around the world, affecting one in nine people. The negative environmental and social consequences of industrial monocrop agriculture is becoming evident, particularly in the contexts of greenhouse gas emissions and the increased frequency and impact of zoonotic disease emergence, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Human activity has altered 70–75% of the ice-free Earth’s surface, squeezing nature and wildlife into a corner. To prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide, the UN has launched a Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. In this context, this review describes the origin and diversity of cultivated species, the impact of modern agriculture and other human activities on plant genetic resources, and approaches to conserve and use them to increase food diversity and production with specific examples of the use of crop wild relatives for breeding climate-resilient cultivars that require less chemical and mechanical input. The need to better coordinate in situ conservation efforts with increased funding has been highlighted. We emphasise the need to strengthen the genebank infrastructure, enabling the use of modern biotechnological tools to help in genotyping and characterising accessions plus advanced ex situ conservation methods, identifying gaps in collections, developing core collections, and linking data with international databases. Crop and variety diversification and minimising tillage and other field practices through the development and introduction of herbaceous perennial crops is proposed as an alternative regenerative food system for higher carbon sequestration, sustaining economic benefits for growers, whilst also providing social and environmental benefits.
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spelling pubmed-93707192022-08-12 Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture Pathirana, Ranjith Carimi, Francesco Plants (Basel) Review Despite the dramatic increase in food production thanks to the Green Revolution, hunger is increasing among human populations around the world, affecting one in nine people. The negative environmental and social consequences of industrial monocrop agriculture is becoming evident, particularly in the contexts of greenhouse gas emissions and the increased frequency and impact of zoonotic disease emergence, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Human activity has altered 70–75% of the ice-free Earth’s surface, squeezing nature and wildlife into a corner. To prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide, the UN has launched a Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. In this context, this review describes the origin and diversity of cultivated species, the impact of modern agriculture and other human activities on plant genetic resources, and approaches to conserve and use them to increase food diversity and production with specific examples of the use of crop wild relatives for breeding climate-resilient cultivars that require less chemical and mechanical input. The need to better coordinate in situ conservation efforts with increased funding has been highlighted. We emphasise the need to strengthen the genebank infrastructure, enabling the use of modern biotechnological tools to help in genotyping and characterising accessions plus advanced ex situ conservation methods, identifying gaps in collections, developing core collections, and linking data with international databases. Crop and variety diversification and minimising tillage and other field practices through the development and introduction of herbaceous perennial crops is proposed as an alternative regenerative food system for higher carbon sequestration, sustaining economic benefits for growers, whilst also providing social and environmental benefits. MDPI 2022-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9370719/ /pubmed/35956515 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11152038 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Pathirana, Ranjith
Carimi, Francesco
Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title_full Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title_fullStr Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title_full_unstemmed Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title_short Management and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for a Sustainable Agriculture
title_sort management and utilization of plant genetic resources for a sustainable agriculture
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9370719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35956515
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11152038
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