Plant breeding is a critical tool in the fight against climate change
Fighting climate change requires a comprehensive strategy that spans energy, transport, and, crucially, food and agriculture. Halting deforestation and adopting sustainable practices in irrigation, biodiversity management, and land use, are imperative. Plant breeding can help.
- climate change
Why plant breeding is a critical tool in the fight against Climate Change
Climate change exerts an unparalleled impact on agriculture.
Yet the sector also contributes 20% to the annual increase to human-driven greenhouse gas emissions.
This cycle, in which agriculture is both victim and contributor, can and must be disrupted.
Fighting climate change requires a comprehensive strategy that spans energy, transport, and, crucially, food and agriculture. Immediate actions, like halting deforestation and adopting sustainable practices in irrigation, biodiversity management, and land use, are imperative.
Achieving these goals requires producing more food on existing farmland. Plant breeding, central to the CGIAR Breeding for Tomorrow Science Program, makes this possible by developing varieties that are climate-resilient, resource-efficient, and adapted to future production systems.
Together with agronomy and policy frameworks, plant breeding is a critical tool in the fight against climate change.
Climate change can be mitigated by plant breeding
A growing global population is putting unprecedented pressure on agricultural systems. To meet rising food demand, farmers are often forced to expand cultivation into new areas. Yet suitable arable land is shrinking due to urbanization, land degradation, and desertification. This tension drives agriculture deeper into natural ecosystems, accelerating deforestation.
Converting natural vegetation into farmland releases significant amounts of carbon stored in soil and biomass. The removal of deep-rooted plants and organic-rich vegetation reduces soil organic matter and speeds up carbon loss, adding to the burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Plant breeding offers a way to break this cycle. By producing more food per hectare across the globe, high-yielding, improved varieties of food crops such as rice, beans, wheat, potatoes, cowpea, maize, and sorghum reduce the pressure to clear additional land and, therefore, the number of trees that are felled. Higher productivity made possible by breeding helps limit agricultural expansion while slowing carbon emissions from land-use change.
New breeding methods, including genomic selection, hybrid development, doubled haploids, and speed breeding, allow scientists to shorten the time required to deliver high-yielding, climate-resilient varieties. With these advances, breeders can respond faster to climate threats, ensuring farmers have access to improved varieties before environmental pressures worsen.
Higher yields per hectare also provide an opportunity to return land to its natural state, boosting biodiversity and enhancing nature’s capacity to absorb carbon. Forest, peatlands, and ocean habitats are among the world’s most effective carbon sinks. Strengthening their ability to sequester carbon could remove up to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
Plant breeding also curbs other pressures on the environment. Unsustainable irrigation and fertilizer use deplete and contaminate water sources. Breeding crops that require fewer inputs, such as drought-tolerant wheat, direct-seeded rice (DSR) with improved water and nitrogen-use efficiency, and heat-tolerant legumes, reduces strain on vital water and nutrient resources. Low-input varieties also benefit farmers who cannot access or afford irrigation or fertilizers, improving equity and livelihood resilience.
Fertilizers are also a major source of potent greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide. Developing pest- and disease-resistant varieties, such as CGIAR’s fall armyworm maize hybrids or tar spot complex resilient lines, reduces the need for chemical inputs. This, in turn, lowers emissions released into the atmosphere and the soil while improving overall environmental health.
Plant breeding helps the world’s poorest adapt to climate change
Plant breeding is one of the most effective tools for helping vulnerable communities cope with the impacts of a warming planet. At CGIAR, breeders intentionally expose key food crops to drought, heat, and other climate stresses in order to identify and select the varieties that perform best under harsh conditions.
These efforts are now accelerated by advances in genomics. Breeders can “read” the genome, the genetic blueprint of any living organism, with greater precision than before. This allows them to identify the genes that help crops withstand heat, water scarcity, flooding, and other climate stresses. By combining these resilience traits, breeders can develop improved varieties and deliver them to farmers faster.
This work is particularly vital in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where many countries and communities face the most severe consequences of climate change. For smallholder farmers, accessing crop varieties that are both more productive, stress-tolerant, nutrient-efficient, and adaptable to changing weather patterns translates into higher incomes, more locally produced food, and lower food prices.
Plant breeding, agronomy and policy: the winning trio
Meeting rising food demand in the context of climate change, urbanization, and shrinking arable land requires farming systems that are both more productive and resilient. Plant breeding is essential, but its impact is greatest when combined with other solutions such as smart agronomy and policy planning.
Rice offers a clear example.
Traditional rice production uses about 40% of the world’s irrigation water, an unsustainable practice as water scarcity deepens. Labor shortages and reduced arable land further increase the need for new approaches.
IRRI’s DSR varieties, where seeds are sown directly rather than transplanted into flooded fields, are a more efficient and sustainable alternative. DSR saves water and labor, supports mechanization, reduces methane emissions, and prepares rice systems for a drier and more unpredictable climate.
On Bohol Island, a major rice-growing area in the Philippines, the construction of a new dam was accompanied by a plan to implement a water-saving technology called alternate wetting and drying (AWD), developed by IRRI and national partners. AWD can help reduce methane emissions by 50%.
This case is a perfect example of how improved varieties, better agronomic practices, and strategic planning can collectively mitigate climate change and enhance food security.
Across CGIAR, this integrated approach is expanding. Breeding for Tomorrow collaborates closely with the Climate Action, Sustainable Farming, and Policy Innovations Science Programs, among others, to co-develop solutions that combine genetic gains with climate-smart farming and supportive policy frameworks.
By combining increased food production with smart policies and coordinated research, we can better address the complex challenges of agriculture and climate change. CGIAR advocates for and actively implements integrated, holistic approaches of this kind.
Resources:
- How much greenhouse gases are emitted by agriculture?
- World’s soils have lost 133bn tonnes of carbon since the dawn of agriculture
- Biodiversity - our strongest natural defense against climate change
- Sustainable rice production under water scarcity conditions using drip irrigation: Based on evidence among Iranian farmers
- Alternate Wetting and Drying
- Learn more about Breeding for Tomorrow
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Main image: Direct Seeded Rice Breeding trials at IRRI HQ, Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines. Credits: Shalabh Dixit, IRRI. Written with Julie Puech. This work contributes to CGIAR Breeding for Tomorrow Science Program.