Rapport (Rapport De Recherche) Année : 2021

Cropbooster-P: White Paper and Scientific Basis of the Strategic Research Agenda

Résumé

The world of 2050 will be facing three major, primary challenges: Firstly, the world population will most probably have reached 9 to 10 billion people and will still be growing, particularly in Africa and Asia, although at reduced rates as compared to presently. To fulfil the growing demands for food and feed plant production has to be increased. In order to protect natural ecosystems and biodiversity, the area of agricultural land presently used should not be extended and, hence, the yield per area arable land must be enhanced substantially. Secondly, the global climate changes will exact its toll. Temperatures remain high and may even increase further, thus shortages in water supply for agriculture will prevail, and extreme weather conditions will occur more frequently. These developments will pose a severe stress to agricultural production leading to substantial decreases in primary plant production. It is, therefore, of prime importance to search for solutions how to stabilize yield. Thirdly, the current food system has become unsustainable, and there is an urgent need for substantial changes as stressed by the EU's Green Deal and its Farm-to-Fork Strategy. Mineral fertilizers and pesticides are heavily used in agriculture posing risks for human health, but, more importantly, they harm the environment as well as biodiversity. If the reductions in inputs are not to be mirrored at the yield level, the resource use efficiencies of our current crops have to be improved. Alternatively, novel (orphan) crops that are better adapted to the changing environments than the current ones have to be identified, trialled and, if found suitable, introduced into farming. Presently, European diets are still relatively meat-rich necessitating that large amounts of primary plant production have to be used for the feeding of livestock. Achieving a transition towards a plant-based diet requires that the cultivation of crops have to be intensified that are rich in food constituents such as proteins, vitamin or micronutrients which hitherto are mainly provided by meat consumption. Coping with these challenges and providing solutions requires an integrative and interdisciplinary approach that has to deal with three pressing issues of crop production, namely yield, nutritional quality, and sustainability. For each of these three topics we have, therefore, set up expert panels whose aim was to look at the three issues from various angles. Each focus group had to review the state of knowledge of their field, to identify the future challenges in the research field that should be addressed with high priority, and finally to outline action points for a future research programme.

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Dates et versions

hal-04505777 , version 1 (15-03-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04505777 , version 1

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Norbert Rolland, Günter Strittmatter, Peter Westhoff. Cropbooster-P: White Paper and Scientific Basis of the Strategic Research Agenda. CropBooster-P - Preparatory action to Boost Global Crop Yield for Food & Nutrition Security and fueling a Bioeconomy. 2021, pp.1-117. ⟨hal-04505777⟩
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