Zee News

New Delhi, Aug 16: Climate change is likely to trigger a "risk of hunger" in India by affecting cereal production by as much as 18 percent because of floods and droughts, a UN agency has warned.

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said India could lose as much as 125 million tonnes of its rain-fed cereal production.

"Rain-fed agriculture in marginal areas in semi-arid and sub-humid regions is mostly at risk," an FAO statement quoted Director-General Jacques Diouf as saying.

In contrast, the industrialised countries are likely to gain in production potential, Diouf said.

"Crop yield potential is likely to increase at higher latitudes for global average temperature increases of up to 1 to 3 degree centigrade depending on the crop and then decrease beyond that," he said.

"On the contrary, at lower latitudes, especially in the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decline for even small global temperature rises, which would increase the risk of hunger," he added.

Greater frequency of droughts and floods would affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes, Diouf added.

The FAO chief said the science and technology must spearhead agricultural production in the next 30 years at a pace faster than the green revolution did during the past three decades.

Advocating the use of biotechnologies, Diouf said the technologies such as in-vitro culture, embryo transfer and the DNA markers can be exploited to supplement conventional breeding approaches.

This would enhance yield levels, increase input use efficiency, reduce risk and boost the nutritional quality of grains, Diouf said.

But he pointed out that most of the Genetically Modified (GM) crops being cultivated today were only herbicide tolerant and pest-resistant.

Development of GM crops which are resistant to climate change conditions such as drought, extreme temperatures, soil acidity and salinity -- something which poor farmers would need to defend against -- is yet a far cry.

Diouf said the scientific community today faces challenge to ensure that new biotechnologies help achieve this goal while taking care of the issues of bio-safety, socio economic and ethical concerns associated with the use of some of these technologies.