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Climate change responders: Which wild plants could hold the key to food security?
As the impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent, the challenge of ensuring global food security becomes more daunting. Causes of this challenge include extreme climate events, land degradation and declining biodiversity. Against this background, researchers have begun to pay renewed attention to wild plants that are closely related to important crops for humans, namely "crop wild relatives" (CWRs). These plants may become key resources in future agricultural production, helping to address the challenges posed by climate change and ensuring the stability of the food supply.
Crop wild relatives are rich in genetic traits that resist various diseases and stresses and can be introduced into cultivated crops through hybridization, which is critical to improving crop yield and quality.
Potential of crop wild relatives
Crop wild relatives refer to wild plant species that are closely related to cultivated plants. Such plants have accumulated many useful characteristics during long-term natural selection, including disease resistance, adaptability and diverse ecological characteristics. The famous Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov realized this in the early 20th century and emphasized the importance of these plants in improving crop quality and yield.
Natural populations of CWRs face increasing risks, including habitat loss and ecosystem instability due to climate change.
Protect wild relatives of crops
As the ecological environment changes, the natural populations of many CWRs are threatened, posing challenges to ecosystem stability and food security. Urbanization and industrialization processes have led to the intensification of agriculture, a process that has fundamentally changed traditional agricultural ecosystems and compressed crop diversity. Therefore, the protection and sustainable utilization of CWR is crucial.
In 2016, 29% of the world's wild relative plant species were completely missing from genetic resources, and a further 24% had less than 10 samples. This tells us that it is urgent to collect and protect these precious genetic resources.
Examples of wild relatives
In the field of cereals, we can find many important CWRs, such as:
- Wheat (Triticum aestivum) – Einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum)
- Corn (Zea mays) – Zea diploperennis
- Rice (Oryza sativa) – Oryza rufipogon
There are also many examples in vegetables, such as:
- Daucus carota – Daucus gracilis
- Spinach (Spinacea oleracea) – Spinacia turkestanica
- Onion (Allium cepa) – Allium galanthum
Looking to the future
As global climate challenges intensify, we need to vigorously protect CWRs. This is not only a need to improve crop quality, but also an urgent task involving global food security. In the face of crisis, we should consider these wild plants as vital resources to cope with future uncertainties. Crop diversity can not only increase the stable supply of food, but also promote sustainable development of agriculture.
As we face climate change and food security challenges, can we make better use of these natural resources to ensure future food needs?
