The Search for New Food Resources

Plants are the basis for the human food supply, either consumed directly or fed to animal intermediaries. In prehistory, in various parts of the world, our forbears brought into cultivation a few hundred species from the hundreds of thousands available and in the process of domestication transformed them to crop plants through genetic alteration by conscious and unconscious selection. Through a long sequence of trial and error, relatively few plant species have become the mainstay of present day agriculture. The 30 most important crops consumed directly by humans (in order of production by weight of agricultural product) include sugarcane, rice, wheat, maize, potato, sugar beet, cassava, barley, sweet potato, soybean, banana/plantain, tomato, cottonseed, orange, grape, sorghum, apple, coconut, cabbage, watermelon, onion, rape, yam, oat, peanut, millet, sunflower, rye, mango, and bean. Our sustenance as a species is now based on the production of these species. There are three options available for increasing future crop resources: (1) emphasize genetic improvement and more efficient production of the major crops; (2) reinvestigate little known and underutilized crops; or (3) explore plant biodiversity to discover completely new crops. The first option continues to receive the most attention because of political support from vested interests such as growers and processors so that traditional crops have received the bulk of research support by the public sector and practically all of the private sector support, while their agricultural production has been reinforced by expensive subsidies or tax advantages. Furthermore, new advances in biotechnology have focused on the concept of altering major crops rather than minor ones becasue it offers the best way to increase returns on investment. Present experience indicates that improvement of major crop yields per unit or area of the major crops continues although the research cost per unit of yield increase has also risen. The consequence of this emphasis on major crops results in a continuing erosion of agricultural biodiversity. The expansion of underutilized or completely new crops offers many potential benefits including production diversification providing a hedge for financial and biological risks, national economic advantages by increasing exports and decreasing imports, improvement of human and livestock diets, creation of new industries based on renewable agricultural resources and substitutions for petroleum-based products, and the spur of economic development in rural areas by creating local, rural-based industries. Although interest in underutilized crops has increased as a result of increasing world globalization because new immigrants continue to prefer their traditional foods, there is no world strategic plan for new crop research, which is presently curtailed by lack of long term support. Similarly, the investigation of completely new crops is virtually ignored and is confined at present to the ornamental and pharmaceutical industries. The long term nature and high risk of exploring, developing, and commercializing completely new crops make it unlikely that the private sector can be successful so that government support and leadership is essential. An optimum strategy for expansion of future food resources will require a balance of effort between the three options described above.