The overall objective of the NAPERDIV project is to establish the base for novel field management guidelines and techniques for identifying best-case scenarios for perennial grain crop use in terms of purposes, growing areas, and coherent farming systems.
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IN THE COMIC >
In The Wheat Code, Priya develops perennial wheat hybrids that thrive in challenging environments to better survive with the harsher conditions developing because of climate change.
Agriculture of the 21st century must guarantee food security and bioenergy supply for a growing global population exposed to climate change and the degradation of natural resources. Presently, annual crops, which includes almost all grains, cover most of the global croplands and are grown largely under intense management with high inputs of agrochemicals. Due to this, these systems contribute substantially to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. Frequent soil tillage and lack of vegetation cover for long periods are associated with extensive soil erosion, soil carbon loss, and nutrient leaching, especially nitrogen.
To mitigate the ecological and economic constraints of annual crop production, we need modern agroecological science and plant breeding to develop environmentally sustainable and simultaneously high-yielding agroecosystems. Whereas agricultural biotechnology is widely considered the key component of global food security in the future innovative agroecological schemes toward sustainable agroecosystems, potentially integrating novel crops, are hitherto neglected. A concept gaining increasing attention in the area of sustainable agroecosystems is the reversed shift from predominant annual to perennial grain crop production. This agroecosystem shift would maintain high yield while maintaining ecosystem services, functions, and biodiversity.
