Climate change and biotechnology: Toolkit for food fish security

Abstract

Climate change (CC) is a reality! It is a great threat to fisheries production especially in Africa that is characterized with normal climate variability phenomenon. Capture fisheries both in marine and freshwater are greatly impacted, resulting in real negative consequences on fish and fish products availability, and the livelihood of fisheries dependent individuals and communities. Some basic problems faced are genetic erosion especially on the endemic species that have adaptive features under negative effect of CC; decline in capture fisheries due to CC variability with other anthropogenic activities; and nutrition insecurity due to malnutrition or under-nutrition. The primary concern is how to mitigate the effects of CC on the decline of capture fisheries through sustainable fisheries and aquaculture production; genetic erosion through breed conservation; provision of sustainable food fish security to solve food fish demand that outstrips fish supply of ever-increasing human population. However, development of technology to improve fish health, to help restore and protect environments, to extend the range of aquatic species and to improve management and conservation of wild stock will be of great benefit to achieve fish and fish products security. Technology strategies such as animal genetic conservation, selective breeding, hybridization, tissue culture and genetic manipulation have been recently employed in developed economies as panacea to myriads of agri-food insecurity. This paper presents biotechnology approaches as toolkit to alleviate the menace of CC and increase fish and fish products for sustainable production, malnutrition solution and enhance the livelihood of fisheries dependent individuals or communities.