A More Intensive Use of Crop Genetic Resources? Hopeful Future or Business As Usual?.

Humanity is faced with a daunting challenge: how to feed the largest number of mouths ever with the fewest resources possible all the while being faced with a global climate warming and rainfall instability, unseen since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000-12,000 years ago and unchecked by a political class in a state of denial? Although an effective response to this challenge will require answers from many different fields, such as biology, anthropology, climatology, sociology, and policy, crop improvement will certainly be part of the solution as a necessary but not sufficient condition. The store of biological diversity conserved ex situ in gene banks and in situ in farms and natural environments can potentially help in crop improvement as the raw material in breeding and, hence, an insurance policy. There are several avenues to a more intensive use of these genetic resources. These include – among others - a more exhaustive exploration of wild and domesticated populations, a better and faster genotyping (structural and functional) and phenotyping of the resources present in gene banks, a more seamless integration of genetic resources into breeding programs using multi-parent cross-hybridized populations, and a better understanding of the management and adoption of improved genetic resources by farmers. The current regime of intellectual property rights as applied to genetic resources is turning out to be a major obstacle to an intensified exploration and utilization of well-characterized genetic diversity. Overall, new opportunities and continued obstacles lie in the way of a more intensive use of our crop genetic resources.