Presentation from Wilhelm Gruissem, President of the Global Plant Council, at the 7th EPSO Conference, 2 Sept 2013.
"Global Plant Council: A coalition of plant and crop societies across the globe, Global needs and contributions from plant science"
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Wilhelm Gruissem - Global Plant Council: A coalition of plant and crop societies across the globe, Global needs and contributions from plant science
1. Global Plant Council
A coalition of plant and crop societies across the globe
Global needs and contributions from plant science
2. The Global Plant Council (GPC)
• The GPC is a coalition of national and regional plant and crop
societies from across the globe
• The GPC seeks to bring plant scientists together to work
synergistically towards solving the pressing problems we face
• The central focus of GPC is to define and engage in coordinated
strategies that impact the most critical global issues:
• World hunger
• Sustainable intensification of crop production
• Climate change
• Health and well-being
• Energy
• Environmental protection
3. The Global Plant Council (GPC)
By working together to formulate a shared vision and allowing distribution of
effort the Global Plant Council aims to :
• Increase awareness of the central importance of plant and crop science
• Accelerate progress in solving pressing global problems via plant
science based approaches
• Facilitate new research programs to address global challenges
• Enable more effective use of knowledge and resources
• Provide a focus and contact point for plant science across the globe
6. In the next 50 years we have to
produce more food than ever before in
the history of humankind
• World population continues to increase
• Per capita food consumption continues to rise
• Consumers continue to demand improved taste, convenience, and nutrition
GROWING WORLD POPULATION (B)
Source: FAO, WHO
RISING CEREAL DEMAND (MMT)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1981 1999 2015 2030
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
1981 1999 2015 2030
TRANSITION NATIONS DEVELOPED NATIONS DEVELOPING NATIONS
9. 2013: the challenge of food security
for all remains
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
• World's hungry are still
nearly 1 billion people!
• Increasing poverty in
Africa, South Asia and
CWANA
• 75% of the poor live in
rural areas
• Increasing malnutrition
10. Society is in transition
Implications for land-use, the environment,
rural development, agriculture and the use
of agricultural feedstocks
OIL
ECONOMY
BIO
ECONOMY
11. 2013+: a time of growing challenges
• Global food security
•Enhanced productivity + nutrition
•Increased yield
•Sustainable production
• Water availability
•Drought-tolerant crops
•Crops with improved water use
efficiency
• Bioenergy
•Biomass production to help meet
demand for fuel should not
compete with food production
• Climate change
•Reduce CO2 footprint
•Increase fertilizer use efficiency
12. GPC Priorities
To help identify and coordinate strategic solutions to global
challenges, the GPC is focusing on five priority areas:
• Sustainable intensification of crop production
• Adaptation to a changing climate
• Transition to a green economy
• Food security and health
• Exchange of knowledge, data and resources
13. GPC Initiatives
The GPC is focusing on a number of initiatives within these
priority areas including
• Digital Seed Bank
Maintaining, understanding and preserving the wealth of
crop biodiversity for future generations.
• Bio-fortification of Crops
Improving the nutritional quality of current and new crops.
14. GPC has identified several other
challenges for which global plant
research needs to find solutions
• Developing perennial rice/wheat/maize
• Development of medicinal plant-based products
• Increasing/enriching agricultural diversity
• Information exchange
• Local-level diversity and yield stability
• Plant-environment metagenome
• Species information for sustainable adaptation capability to
climate change
15. Agricultural centers of origin developed
independently in different parts of the
world
Wheat, Barley, Peas, Grapes
~ 13,000 years ago
Maize, Pumpkin, Bean,
Potato
~ 10,000 years ago
Rice, Soybean
~ 9,000 years ago
Banana,
Coconut
Sorghum, Millet,
Coffee
16. Only three cereal crops
deliver nearly 60% of the
global calories
Most important crops for food and feed calorie supply
Maize
7%
Rice
26%
Wheat
23%
17. The increase in crop production between the
1960‘s to 1990‘s was the result of the
“Green Revolution”
High-yielding varieties with shorter stems and
improved nitrogen use efficiency resulted in increased
use of fertilizer and pesticides
Photos courtesy of S. Harrison, LSU Ag center and The World Food Prize.
Breeder and Nobel Laureate
Norman Borlaug 1914-2009
19. Demand for fertilizer is growing
primarily
in Asia and South-America
Quelle: IFA
http://www.fertilizer.org
20. Existing mineral fertilizer resources
will not be able to meet the long-term
agricultural needs
• Nitrogen
• Current production plants under construction will meet the increasing demand
for nitrogen fertilizer (about 3% / year)
• Phosphate
• Current rock phosphate resources are estimated to last the next 200 years
• Development of a mining site takes about 5 years
• Potassium
• Current resources similar to phosphate but larger deposits
• Development of a mining site takes about 8 years
Source: www.yarra.com
21. The Green Revolution greatly improved
crop production and food security, but
also decreased crop diversity
Year
High-yielding
varieties in %
Traditional
varieties in %
22. Spreading monoculture is a
potential threat to food security
• Rice diversity is decreasing
- in 1986, the single rice variety “IR36” was grown on 11 million hectares in Asia
- in China, all rice F1 hybrids grown on 15 million hectares share the same male sterility genes
- all modern rice varieties have the same dwarfing gene
• Wheat diversity is decreasing
- in 1983, 67% of the wheat fields in Bangladesh were planted to a single variety
- in Ireland, 90% of the total wheat area is planted to six varieties
- in 1949, China used over 10,000 varieties for production, in 1970 on 1,000 remained in use
• Diversity of other crops is decreasing
- in the Netherlands, for example, the three top varieties of nine major crops covered from
81 to 99% of the respective areas planted.
- one cultivar accounted for 94% of the spring barley planted Source: FAO
23. Monocultures favor the spread of
pathogens
“The new strains of stem rust
UG99,…, are much more
dangerous than those that, 50
years ago, destroyed as much as
20 percent of the American wheat
crop.”
24. Ancient or wild varieties often contain
valuable genes that were lost or neglected
while breeding high-yielding elite varieties
25. The Kasalath PSTOL1 gene is a good
example of genes present in diverse rice
varieties but not in elite mega-varieties
26. Garris et al Genetics, 2006
Tolerant varieties
- Dular (aus-type)
- Kasalath (aus-type) Intolerant varieties
- IR64 (indica-type)
- Nipponbare (japonica-type)
FR13A
Kasalath
N22
Pokkali
Exploring the potential of Aus-type
rice varieties for drought and P-
deficiency tolerance
27. Kasalath and Dular have several genes that are
differentially expressed during drought and P-
deficiency but that are not differentially
expressed or not present in IR64
Venn diagram showing the number of significantly and differentially expressed genes (SDEGs) in particular varieties.
RNA-Seq results were divided into two groups, transcripts aligned to Nipponbare (A) and de novo assembled transcripts
in tolerant (Dular and Kasalath) and intolerant (IR64) varieties.
28. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is
a step in the right direction, but not
peace of mind!
http://www.croptrust.org
29. SeedSeq
Capturing biodiversity in seed banks
around the world
Susan McCouch
Hannes Dempewolf
The Global Crop Diversity Trust
Digital Seed Bank
Exploring the basis of crop biodiversity
and mining for useful genes
Wilhelm Gruissem
The Global Plant Council
The Global Plant Council and the Global Plant
Diversity Trust have joined forces to capture
and understand the mechanisms of biodiversity
of our crops present in seed banks around the
world
30. GPC Executive
Board
The GPC Executive Board is elected from and by the GPC member
organisations representatives
• Prof. Wilhelm Gruissem (European Plant Science Organisation) –
Acting President and Chair
• Prof. Henry Nguyen (American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science
Society of America) - Vice Chair
• Prof. Gustavo Habermann (Brazilian Society of Plant Physiology) – Treasurer
• Prof. Kasem Ahmed (African Crop Science Society)
• Prof. Zhihong Xu (Chinese Society of Plant Biologists)
• Dr Ruth Bastow – Executive Director
31. Visit the new GPC website at www.globalplantcouncil.org
32. Visit the new GPC website at www.globalplantcouncil.org
33. Thank you...
…solutions to global challenges can be found and
future generations will have enough to eat!
…your expertise and help assures that…
34. …how would the world react if the 1 Billion people of the
USA, Canada and the EU would not have enough to eat
every day?
Just to put 1 Billion hungry people into
perspective…
35. Sustainable food security
is facing a potential bottleneck
Total kultiviert Heute kultiviert 95% der Ernährung
• Since the beginning of agriculture, humans have cultivated 7,000 plant species
• Today only 150 plant species (2%) are agriculturally relevant for food and clothing
• Only 10 plant species are cultivated today to provide 95% of food and feed
Total cultivated since
the beginning of agriculture
Cultivated today 95% of food and feed
