Integration and commercialization of local varieties under sub-optimal environments for food security, promoting sustainable agriculture and agro-biodiversity conservation

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com be required for developing countries. To meet the ever increasing and diversified food demand, the production needs to be doubled from the available resources which are already under stress. Dry lands cover 40% of the world’s land area spread in 55 countries, having 2.5 billion people out of which one third people depend on agriculture. Dry lands having 644 million people who are poorest of the poor with food insecurity, 27% children in sub Sahara Africa and 42% in dry land Asia are malnourished. Climate change could further increase 10% dry land area with the possibility that climatic zones could shift toward poles. More variability and occurrences of short periods of extreme stresses in the form of drought and heat being experienced during the crop growing season. Also, environmental degradation are widespread as many ecosystems may decline or fragment and individual species may become extinct. About 3.8 million km2 and 790 million people in the world are highly exposed to at least two climate-related hazards, while about 0.5 million km2 and 105 million people are exposed to three or more hazards. Climate change further increases the exposure to multiple hazards, affecting their magnitude, frequency and spatial distribution.1 Moreover, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) in 2005 assessed that out of the 24 ecosystem services, fifteen are considered to be seriously degraded. On a global scale, over 21% of the yield variability of maize, soybean, rice and wheat change could be explained by the change in variability of the agro-climatic index more specifically, the change in variability of temperatures exceeding the optimal range for yield formation was more important in explaining the yield variability change than other abiotic stresses, such as temperature below the optimal range for yield formation and soil water deficit.2 Ecological foundation of sustainable agriculture are soil, water, biodiversity, and climate and all are interlinked. Moreover, due to mono-culturing for agricultural intensification, excessive mining of nutrients, declining water table, the soil became hungry as well as thirsty, water is contaminated, air is polluted and biodiversity loss is increasing at an alarming rate and thus jeopardized food security. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields.3 Biodiversity is widely understood to occur at genetic, population/species and community/ ecosystem levels.