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How can we resist pests and diseases through crop diversification? What solutions do scientists have?
Today, as the world faces food security challenges, crop diversity has become an important focus. Crop diversity, the variability among crop plants, including their genetic and phenotypic characteristics, is part of agricultural biodiversity. Crop diversity has declined significantly over the past 50 years, and the variety of crops has been reduced significantly, threatening the food supply for a growing global population.
Experts warn that if current trends continue, up to half of all plant species are at risk of extinction.
Increasing resistance to specific diseases is key to diversifying crops to combat pests and diseases. Growing a diverse range of crops not only reduces reliance on chemical pesticides, but also improves soil health and enhances ecosystem stability. Conventional agricultural practices that make better use of differences between crops, such as crop rotation and leaving fields fallow, can effectively reduce the accumulation of pests and pathogens.
Over the past few centuries, with the rise of industrial agriculture, single-crop cultivation (monoculture) has become mainstream. Although this practice has increased yields in the short term, it has led to the loss of crop genetic resources and a reduction in biodiversity. In particular, the diversity of some crop varieties, such as apples or potatoes, has been greatly reduced, and their resistance to pests and diseases has become relatively weak.
Growing different crop varieties can make farms more resilient and is an important means of meeting future challenges.
Scientists advocate using this crop diversity to build ecological defense systems. As early as the Andes, farmers practiced polycropping, growing up to 50 different potato varieties on the same plot. Such practices can not only resist pests and diseases, but also effectively protect the soil ecosystem and promote nutrient circulation.
Currently, many organizations around the world are actively involved in crop diversity conservation, including the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute and Bioversity International, which are working hard to establish gene banks to protect endangered crop varieties. These protections go beyond registering and storing seeds to include providing farmers with opportunities to use traditional varieties in order to maintain ecological stability and biodiversity.
Often, many farmers lack sufficient resources to support crop diversification, so government support and international collaboration in this regard are particularly important. In this regard, many countries have also begun to take measures to encourage farmers to grow a variety of crops, increase the market value of agricultural products, and thus increase farmers' income.
The economic benefits of crop diversity are obvious, not only reducing the risk of pests and diseases, but also improving the competitiveness of the overall industry.
Scientists are now also beginning to explore how to combine genetic technology with traditional agricultural practices to promote crop variety improvement. Genetically modified crops can resist diseases and environmental changes more effectively through special gene combinations, which will be crucial to future food production.
However, this genetic technology has also sparked a lot of discussion and controversy, especially concerns about environmental impact and food safety. Consumer acceptance of genetically modified crops and the possible ecological risks they may cause require the joint attention of the scientific community and policymakers, and the formulation of reasonable regulations.
What we need to consider is how can we maintain crop diversity while achieving sufficient output to meet future table needs as global demand increases and population grows?
