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More Potatoes- Is Genetic Enhancement the answer?

Prof. Rodomiro Ortiz spoke about the role of "Agrobiodiversity Management for Food Security" in one of the plenary sessions of Tropentag 2012. He is presently Faculty Professor, Department of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. Tropentag 2012 His presentation dealt about World´s food, Agrobiodiversity, Green Revolution, Climate change and Biotechnology tools. The global food crisis is a major concern in today’s world. There is an annual increase of 78 million population in the world. More than 1.5 billion people are suffering from obesity worldwide while more than one billion people are under poverty and around three billion people are under/ nourished. 30% of all food crops worldwide are wasted. The main challenge today related to global crisis is “the world continues facing an increasing demand for nutritious and quality food, feed, fiber and fuel”. “Agriculture needs eco-efficient and resilient systems to meet end-user demands” said Prof. Ortiz. The three main components of agrobiodiversity are Genetic, Species and Ecosystem diversity. He also spoke about germplasm enhancement and crop breeding and the two main phases involved: “collection and generation of variation and reproductive potential followed by selection of most productive surviving genotypes”. An insight in Borlaug’s legacy to plant breeding was also given by him. Enhancing potato cultigens with wild species and landrace gene pools were taken as an example for germplasm enhancement. Potato: the model crop species for genetic enhancement of polysomic polyploids. He also spoke about increase in maize production through germplasm enhancement. Genetic broadening, Intra- specific crop diversification and genetically enhanced seed/ embedded technology the three main components for intensifying sustainable crop yields through Agrobiodiversity. He wound the speech by talking about the 7 F’s + “1” of Agrobiodiversity for multi-dimensional agriculture. They are Food, Feed, Fiber, Flower, Fuel, Fun, Feedstock, Pharmaceutical.

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