Hrvatski
Agricultural systems are vulnerable to climate change, and global reservoirs of plant genetic diversity are proving to be a valuable means of crop adaptation. A study conducted by Samuel Pironon and Marybel Soto Gomez shows that sweet potato production is at risk of extreme heat, but several tolerant varieties can still thrive and potentially provide climate resilience.
Plant agrodiversity, the diversity of plants that sustain agriculture, has supported human survival for millennia and will continue to play a crucial role in securing global food supplies in the face of climate change. Of the nearly 400,000 species of vascular plants found on Earth, only a few are widely cultivated, and only nine ingest more than 75% of the calories of plant origin in the human diet1. The productivity of these major crops is highly dependent on climate, so future changes in temperature and precipitation patterns are predicted to have a strong impact on food systems.
Climate change can have direct and indirect effects on food crops, including changes in their growth, development, nutritional content, structure and quality of substrates, and interactions with pests and pollinators.
Interspecific diversity encompasses variations between species and may represent an additional adaptation strategy to (i) replace a sensitive crop with a more resistant one with similar nutritional value or (ii) introduce tolerance traits from wild relatives into the crop to produce new more resistant varieties by cultivation.
