Threats of climate change, drought and salinity have remedies in seed banks
Seed Hunter - ABC1 Television Guide
The story of a search for biodiversity in the form of resilient wild races of wheat, barley, and chickpea in remote regions of Tajikistan, is interleaved with a message about the clear and present threat to food security posed by climate change and population expansion.
Another somewhat troublesome message emerging in this program is that the faster methods of transferring sorely needed genes for drought resistance or salinity resistance from wild crop races into our current food crops are being put to one side by plant breeders, merely because of concern about public non-acceptance modern genetic technology. As a result, crop breeding is an unnecessarily painful and slow process, even though we now face a global food security crisis.
Fortunately this program also spreads the message that global challenges to food security posed by biofuels, climate change, and population growth are serious issues with no easy solutions. Perhaps in some small way Seed Hunters may wake some people to the fact that stultification of crop breeding has its risks too
The unintended side-effects of high yielding cereal varieties, in terms of loss of local plant races are dealt with in a low-key fashion without emotional sermons about the evils of modern agriculture.
All in all a good program to educate high school students about why genetics is important for farming.
Seed Hunter
8:30pm Tuesday, 21 Oct 2008
Documentary CC PG
Seed Hunter is a one-hour documentary, as part of the ABC's Future Makers series, about the hunt for seeds that may help save the world from its greatest ever crisis - a global food shortage brought about by human-induced climate change.
As Australia and much of the world wrestles with hotter weather and a dwindling water supply, mass starvation on a global scale is on the cards if we can't find ways to improve crop resilience. Scientists are exploring many solutions to adapt our food supply, including going back to Mother Nature herself to locate the genes that can withstand our changing climate; genes that, thanks to a high-yielding monoculture, have almost disappeared.
Australian scientist Dr Ken Street, aka the 'Seed Hunter', spends his life searching for the tiny seeds that could play a role in helping food producers around the world. This film follows Dr Ken, the 'Indiana Jones' of agriculture, on a journey from the drought-ravaged farms of Australia, to the heart of the Middle East, to the mountains of Tajikistan as he hunts for elusive wild chickpea that can survive temperatures of 40 degrees above and below zero.
Sounds simple enough until you realise that land clearing, urbanisation and modern farming systems have all but wiped out these ancient food sources. The rare wild chickpea's tough, resilient genes could help transform the modern chickpea variety, enabling it to be grown by more people.
At journey's end, Ken travels deep into the Arctic to deliver his precious bounty of seed to the impenetrable 'doomsday vault', built as a back-up for the world's seed supply of every food type known to humankind.
Labels: Cereals, Food security, Genetics
1 Comments:
Absolutly brilliant ! I am not a farmer but I wish many farmer watched this inspiring program to lift their spirit and see there are alternative and hope !
And despite our hard changing climate we can survive and feed the planet !
Go Ken ! you are a hero !
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