Al Gore (Photo : Reuters)
Climate change is one of the most persistent problems in the world today, and the most affected by it is the food production sector which is battling the severe reduction of area under arable land globally.
Plant breeders at International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Columbia are working to fix the problem of global hunger in the light of increasing incidents of crop failure due to high temperatures. It was found that normally bean pollination is severely affected when the night temperatures exceed 19°.
It is estimated that by 2050 the supply of common bean species would reduce to almost 50 percent of what it was at the beginning of the century as presorted by The American Register. Besides, it has also been noted that beans form a key component of diet to more than 400 million people globally, a majority of which are concentrated in the Latin America and Africa.
Moreover, these new varieties of beans are bred the "old fashioned way" without employing any genetic engineering by taking less popular species of the same and combining them with the commonly used ones such as Kidney, Black, White and Pinto Beans. These beans are susceptible to the effects of high temperatures which cause other crops of the same genre to fail, AAAS reported.
A group of plant breeder led by Stephen Beebe examined more than 1000 varieties of bean for the effects of temperature. These beans were planted in the lowlands of Northern Columbia and at a research field of University Of Tolima, south of Bogota where the night temperatures exceeded 23°. It was found that only 6 survived the high temperatures.
Though it would be years before these new varieties would be made available to the farmers, still it seems that climate change may not endanger the Global Hunger Index.
