World lags in breeding climate-proof crops: experts

OSLO (Reuters) – The world is running out of time to develop new seed varieties to confront climate change and head off food shortages that could affect billions of people, experts said.

Marking the first anniversary on Thursday of the opening of a “doomsday” seed vault on the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic, they said that people in Africa and Asia were most at risk from a lack of climate-proof crops.

“It’s a question of urgency,” Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, told Reuters by telephone with other experts from Spitsbergen. He said governments needed to invest more in breeding new seeds.

“Unlike the bank that needs to be bailed out this week, this problem is going to be an emergency 20 years from now. But by then it will be too late” he said.

Reuters