United States Department of Agriculture

A report summary from the Economic Research Service

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rural America. www.ers.usda.gov

April 2015

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Paul W. Heisey and Kelly Day Rubenstein

Using Crop Genetic Resources To Help 

Agriculture Adapt to Climate Change: 

Economics and Policy 

What Is the Issue?

Climate change poses likely risks to future crop productivity as temperatures rise, rainfall 

patterns become more variable, and heat waves, drought, pests, and diseases increase. One 

strategy for helping farmers adapt to these changes is the development of crop varieties 

with better tolerance for increased stresses. Traits to boost crop adaptation, which may be 

found in genetic resources such as landraces (local varieties developed by farmers over 

many years) or in wild relatives of domestic crops, may be incorporated into varieties that 

gain wide commercial production. In light of their potential social and economic benefits, 

such resources have probably been underused. This report reviews the types of genetic 

resources, the ways they have been used, and how they might be used in the future. The 

report also discusses economic, scientific, and institutional factors that will determine the 

extent of genetic resource use and the benefits it might bring to climate change adaptation.

What Did the Study Find?

The authors first evaluated past and current use of crop genetic resources for stress adaptation and potential future demands on these resources. Their research led to the following 

conclusions:

• Empirical evidence from genetic resource use suggests that substantial economic 

benefits can follow from the collection, characterization, and use of genetic resources to 

improve crop resistance and adaptability.

• While the economic returns to genetic improvements in some U.S. crops have been 

substantial, contributions of the various stages of development—genetic resource 

discovery, conservation and use, biological research, and breeding of new commercial 

cultivars—are not always easy to differentiate and assess.

• Climate change is likely to increase demand for new crop varieties with better resilience to stresses such as heat, drought, pests, and diseases. In recent years, demand for 

crop genetic resources from the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) has 

increased rapidly, even as the NPGS budget has fallen in real dollars.
• The use of new genetic traits in crops has concentrated more on tolerance to pests and diseases than to 

stresses like heat and drought that are also expected to increase with climate change.

• Recent scientific literature suggests genetically controlled traits responding to heat and drought may 

need to be considered together to have the greatest impact. 

• Direct or easily traceable use of new genetic traits from sources such as landraces and wild relatives has 

been relatively rare for some crops but more common for others (e.g., potatoes and tomatoes).

Next, the study focused on technical, economic, and institutional and political factors that help explain the 

current pattern of genetic resource use and that are likely to affect future use. A summary follows of the 

results.

• Two kinds of technical change could reduce the costs of using genetic resources and thus increase their 

use for climate-change adaptation:

— Improvements in genetic resource collection, conservation, characterization, and evaluation 

methods (e.g., through geographic information systems for predicting adaptation based on spatial 

information and DNA genetic marker analysis), and

— Increased efficiency in incorporating valuable genetic traits into commercial crop varieties (e.g., 

through genetic markers linked to genes and gene segments that govern desired traits).

• Private firms may find it difficult to market and profit from the largely social benefits of genetic resource 

collection, conservation, and prebreeding activities. With insufficient private-sector incentives, the 

public sector is left to play a major role in optimal development of genetic traits to aid climate-change 

adaptation.

• Institutional factors such as international agreements and intellectual property rules can promote or 

hinder increased use of crop genetic resources to adapt to climate change, meaning that access to 

genetic resources will be determined not only by supply and demand, but also by legal and political 

factors. This suggests the importance of considering unintended as well as intended consequences of such 

policies and agreements. 

How Was the Study Conducted?

The authors reviewed the relevant scientific literature to determine how climate change may affect agricultural production, and thus the kinds of genetic traits that might be important for adaptation to climate 

change. They examined data from multiple sources to characterize past and current patterns of genetic 

resource use, including:

• Case studies of the use of particular genetic resources;

• Studies of the use of crop wild relatives for genetic improvement;

• Budget and distribution data for the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS); and

• ERS analyses of data from USDA’s Current Research Information System on U.S. public agricultural 

research, NPGS holdings from the Germplasm Resources Information Network, and information on 

traits used by the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize Project, a public-private collaborative effort.

The authors also reviewed the literature on the economics of genetic resource use and combined their observations into a supply/demand framework to analyze how genetic resource use for climate-change adaptation 

might increase over time. They also assessed existing intellectual property institutions and international 

agreements related to genetic resources.

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