Role of Wild Relatives for Development of Climate-Resilient Varieties

Abstract

Climate change is a hot topic nowadays, and its impact on agriculture and related fields makes the scientific community to work toward innovating new technologies which proves resilient during fluctuations in climate. Climate resilience can be generally defined as the capacity for a socio-ecological system to absorb stresses and maintain function in the face of external stresses imposed upon it by climate change and to adapt, reorganize, and evolve into more desirable configurations that improve the sustainability of the system, leaving it better prepared for future climate change impacts. Climate changes possess a severe effect on plant genetic resources and wild plant species. These wild species are the rich source of novel alleles for biotic and abiotic stress resistance which can be used to develop varieties with superior traits. Thus, understanding of anomalies in climatic variables is essential to make the agriculture sector climate resilient. Thus, future crop species will need to be able to thrive in a drier, warmer, and more variable and extreme climatic conditions. To meet these challenges, plant breeders need to exploit genetic diversity available in the form of germplasm, landraces, and wild or weedy forms. Some of the genetic diversity may be found in landraces, traditional/farmer’s varieties that are still being cultivated by farmers around the world. However, a much wider spectrum of biodiversity is found in wild plant species that are closely related to domesticated crops. They are of key importance to breeding crops for adaptation to climate changes.