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Food security; genetic resource; healthy food; orphan crops; stress tolerance; sustainable agriculture

Climate change, along with current agricultural practices, is going to pose a significant challenge for futurefood security, especially in developing countries. Orphan crops can help mitigate this threat due to theirinherent properties of stress tolerance and nutrition content. Industrialization of agriculture has left these minorcrops behind in terms of domestication. As a result, the potential of these crops is underutilized. These cropscan be a game-changer in the long term if necessary steps are taken to improve the quality as well as quantity ofyield. Concerted efforts by many groups around the world have been taken for research and development ofthese crops. Besides, the unique properties of these crops have caught the media attention, which hails thesecrops as superfoods. Favourable government policies to promote these crops can help in the large-scaleadoption of these crops by the farming community. Besides, the stress-resilience of these crops can help boostthe sustainability of agriculture and ensure food security for future generations.

BRIJESH KUMAR¹ PURVA BHALOTHIA²

1. Plant Stress Biology Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India
2. Birla Institute of Scientific Research (BISR), Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Published

16 October 2020