Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent is a high biodiversity region where most temperate-zone agricultural species originated and were first domesticated. A favorable environment, a special plant community, and an adaptive population combined to initiate the Neolithic—the New Stone Age—in the Fertile Crescent. However, over time, valuable plant genetic resources of the region are being eroded through degradation of natural habitats, intensification of the cultivation of arable lands, expansion of cultivation into marginal areas, replacement of diverse and widely adapted landraces by new cultivars based on a narrow genetic base, and over-exploitation of natural pastures and grazing lands. There is a grave risk that much of the inherent biodiversity of the Fertile Crescent will be lost unless a holistic approach to the management of ecosystems, based on sustainable agriculture and sustainable development, is implemented. Components of the holistic approach are presented and discussed under the following five themes: (i) assessment of problems, obstacles and needs (ii) land use management, including soils, water and vegetation (iii) the conservation of agricultural biodiversity and its utilization in agricultural production systems (iv) social, political and economic factors, including indigenous knowledge and (v) human resources. It is hypothesized that food security for future generations in the Fertile Crescent will be strengthened by the conservation and utilization of agricultural biodiversity. This can be achieved through the development of productive and sustainable resource management strategies in the agroecosystems of the region. INTRODUCTION The modern territories Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, western Iran, and southeast Turkey encompass the region often referred to as the Fertile Crescent. Here, many of the species of temperate-zone agriculture originated and were first domesticated. Their wild relatives and landraces are still found in the region (Harlan 1992; Zohary and Hopf 1993). It is an area of megadiversity of important food, feed, medicinal, horticultural crops, spices, pasture and rangeland species. However, the area under arable, annual and perennial crops and forests is small, leaving the bulk of the land as steppe, desert, or semi-desert. Much of the land has steep slopes and/or shallow, or saline, soils that are unsuitable for cultivation without extensive and expensive reclamation work. The land resource is fragile and the conservation and maintenance of its biodiversity and productivity are of crucial concern (Held 1994). THE FERTILE CRESCENT: CENTER OF ORIGIN AND CENTER OF DIVERSITY The Fertile Crescent is at the core of the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region (see Kouchoukos et al., this volume). The WANA region straddles three important centers of biological diversity: the Near Eastern, the Mediterranean and the Central Asian. Many major crops, including cereals, pulses, spices, oil crops, fiber