Daily non-political popular news in brief.

Climate change threatens wild relatives of key crops

Wild relatives of plants such as the potato and the peanut are at risk of extinction, threatening a valuable source of genes that are necessary to boost the ability of cultivated crops to resist pests and tolerate drought, according to a new study released today by scientists of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The culprit is climate change, the researchers said.

Read more »

Keywords: climate, change, threatens, wild, relatives, key, crops, threaten, relative, crop

« Previous | Next »

Similar news on "Climate change threatens wild relatives of key crops":

1. Pollinators help one-third of the world's food crop production
   10-25-2006 · EurekAlert!
   Pollinators affect 35 percent of the world's food crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading crops worldwide, finds a new study co-authored by a UC Berkeley conservation biologist. The study is the first global estimate of food crop production that is reliant upon animal pollination. It comes one week after a National Research Council report detailed the troubling decline in populations of key North American pollinators.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
2. Smithsonian scientists connect climate change, origins of agriculture in Mexico
   06-01-2007 · EurekAlert!
   New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexico’s Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
3. European lead in reading past climates from ice cores
   10-11-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Climate change is a reality today, but how can we find out about the future dangers it poses? What we really need is a full record of the Earth's climate for several hundred thousand years, complete with samples of air from different epochs that can be taken to the lab for analysis. Incredibly, this record exists, in the icecaps of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and a European Science Foundation program has a key role in deciphering it.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
4. Accelerating loss of ocean species threatens human well-being
   11-06-2006 · EurekAlert!
   An international group of ecologists and economists has shown that the loss of biodiversity is profoundly reducing the ocean's ability to produce seafood, resist diseases, filter pollutants and rebound from stresses such as overfishing and climate change. Their results are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
5. US Climate Change Science Program provides key contributions to IPCC fourth assessment
   02-15-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Research conducted by scientists funded through the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) has helped resolve key uncertainties about the causes of global climate change and has helped refine projected future changes in temperature and sea-level rise, as published in the Working Group I contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, the summary of which was issued Feb. 2, 2007.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
6. Wildfire drives carbon levels in northern forests
   10-31-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Far removed from streams of gas-thirsty cars and pollution-belching factories lies another key player in global climate change. Circling the northern hemisphere, the conifer-dominated boreal forests -- one of the largest ecosystems on earth -- act as a vast natural regulator of atmospheric carbon levels.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
7. Rising food prices threaten world's poor people
   12-03-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalization and urbanization are all converging to transform food production, markets and consumption, according to a new report by the International Food Policy Research Institute. As a result, global food demand and prices are likely to rise, threatening the livelihoods and nutrition of poor people in developing countries. The report, "The World Food Situation: New Driving Forces and Required Actions," was released today at the annual general meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
8. Impoverished areas of Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from climate change in 20 years
   01-31-2008 · EurekAlert!
   Many of the world's poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment. Their findings will be published in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Science.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
9. Extinction of Neanderthals Was Not a Climate Disaster Scenario
   09-26-2007 · Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
   Scientists have offered several competing theories for what led to the extinction of the Neanderthals, with much of the debate focusing on the relative roles of climate change versus conflict with modern humans. New research shows that Neanderthals did not die out at a time of extreme and sudden climatic change, as some researchers have suggested.
   Similar news · Read more »
   
10. Scientists develop new measure of 'socioclimactic' risk
    12-10-2007 · EurekAlert!
    Researchers have taken a first step toward quantifying the "socioclimactic" exposure of different countries to future climate change. The research team found that China, India and the United States face substantial exposure relative to other nations. By integrating state-of-the-art global climate model experiments with socioeconomic indicators of poverty, wealth and population, we create a unique measure of 'socioclimactic' risk for each nation.
    Similar news · Read more »