Tadele Zerihun
Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Center for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Scientifica (Cairo). 2018 Jan 17;2018:1451894. doi: 10.1155/2018/1451894. eCollection 2018.
A changing climate, a growing world population, and a reduction in arable land devoted to food production are all problems facing the world food security. The development of crops that can yield under uncertain and extreme climatic and soil growing conditions can play a key role in mitigating these problems. Major crops such as maize, rice, and wheat are responsible for a large proportion of global food production but many understudied crops (commonly known as "orphan crops") including millets, cassava, and cowpea feed millions of people in Asia, Africa, and South America and are already adapted to the local environments in which they are grown. The application of modern genetic and genomic tools to the breeding of these crops can provide enormous opportunities for ensuring world food security but is only in its infancy. In this review, the diversity and types of understudied crops will be introduced, and the beneficial traits of these crops as well as their role in the socioeconomics of Africa will be discussed. In addition, the response of orphan crops to diverse types of abiotic stresses is investigated. A review of the current tools and their application to the breeding of enhanced orphan crops will also be described. Finally, few examples of global efforts on tackling major abiotic constraints in Africa are presented.
气候变化、世界人口增长以及用于粮食生产的耕地减少，都是全球粮食安全面临的问题。培育能够在不确定和极端气候及土壤生长条件下生长的作物，对于缓解这些问题可发挥关键作用。玉米、水稻和小麦等主要作物占全球粮食产量的很大比例，但许多研究较少的作物（通常称为“小众作物”），包括小米、木薯和豇豆，养活了亚洲、非洲和南美洲数百万人，并且已经适应了它们所种植的当地环境。将现代遗传和基因组工具应用于这些作物的育种，可以为确保全球粮食安全提供巨大机遇，但目前尚处于起步阶段。在这篇综述中，将介绍研究较少的作物的多样性和类型，并讨论这些作物的有益特性及其在非洲社会经济中的作用。此外，还将研究小众作物对不同类型非生物胁迫的反应。还将描述当前工具及其在改良小众作物育种中的应用。最后，列举一些全球应对非洲主要非生物限制因素的努力实例。
