Biotech crops Imperative for achieving the Millenium Development Goals and sustainability of agriculture in the climate change era

Biotechnological intervention in the development of crops has opened new vistas in agriculture. Central to the accomplishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), biotech-agriculture is essential in meeting these targets. Biotech crops have already made modest contributions toward ensuring food and nutrition security by reducing losses and increasing productivity, with less pesticide input. These crops could help address some of the major challenges in agriculture-based economies created by climate change. Projections of global climate change expect the concentration of greenhouse gases to increase, aridization of the environment to increase, temperature fluctuations to occur sharply and frequently, and spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall to be disturbed—all of which will increase abiotic stress-related challenges to crops. Countering these challenges and to meet the food requirement of the ever-increasing world population (expected to reach 9 billion by 2030) we need to (1) develop and use biotech crops for mitigating adverse climatic changes; (2) develop biotech crops resilient to adverse environmental conditions; and (3) address the issues/non-issues raised by NGO’s and educate the masses about the benefits of biotech crops.

Researcher Details

Research Paper

Biotech crops Imperative for achieving the Millenium Development Goals and sustainability of agriculture in the climate change era

Category

Sustainable farming

Researcher Name

Amjad M. Husaini ; Narendra Tuteja

Organisation/ University

Centre for Plant Biotechnology; Division of Biotechnology; Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir; Plant Molecular Biology Group; International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology; New Delhi, India

Designation

Faculty

Patent Applied?

No

Patent no

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