Growing Stronger Crops for a Changing World

The crops that we grow for food are sensitive to the effects of climate change, including drought, flooding, poor soil conditions, and increasing temperatures. This is a major problem because the demand for food continues to grow as Earth’s population increases—and we cannot keep turning land into farmland. Instead, we could try to develop crop plants that can survive the stresses of a changing climate. The wild relatives of many crop plants can thrive in challenging environments, but those survival traits were often lost as farmers bred those plants to become good food producers. How can science help crop plants to regain important survival traits? In this article, we will describe two possible ways: either giving existing crop plants the survival genes from wild plants, or giving wild plants (that already have survival genes) the genes that can make them good food producers. Both options are challenging, so plant scientists have plenty of work to do!