Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide

Image

Primary regions of diversity of major agricultural crops worldwide.

Published by the Royal Society, UK, on 8 June 2016, this study Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide provides a novel perspective on the ongoing globalization of food systems worldwide, and bolsters evidence for the importance of international collaboration on genetic resource conservation and exchange.

The study determines the origins (‘primary regions of diversity’) of the crops comprising the food supplies and agricultural production of countries worldwide. It estimates the degree to which countries use crops from regions of diversity other than their own (‘foreign crops’), and quantifies changes in this usage over the past 50 years. Countries are highly interconnected with regard to primary regions of diversity of the crops they cultivate and/or consume. Foreign crops are extensively used in food supplies (68.7% of national food supplies as a global mean are derived from foreign crops) and production systems (69.3% of crops grown are foreign). Foreign crop usage has increased significantly over the past 50 years, including in countries with high indigenous crop diversity. The study includes many useful infographics and data.

The study has been supported by the project Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting, and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives, a major global effort to conserve crop wild relatives (CWR) and facilitate their use in crop breeding for food security. It supports national programmes to collect and conserve CWR, as well as collaborative pre-breeding projects around the world. This initiative, which is supported by the Government of Norway, has a planned duration of ten years.