IMPROVING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND FOOD SECURITY UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE CONDITIONS

Climate change represents a major challenge for food security in the coming years, as it is causing a significant reduction of crop yields worldwide, primarily due to the increase in the intensity and frequency of drought periods and the progressive salinisation of irrigated farmland. The best strategy to improve agricultural production appears to be the development of drought and salt-tolerant crop cultivars. Intensive research and promising results in recent years show that this objective will be reached soon, applying classical breeding (supported by modern molecular tools) and plant genetic transformation. In addition, domestication and commercial cultivation of stress-tolerant wild species will also help increase food production. In the meantime, other strategies will contribute, even if more modestly, to enhance stress tolerance and improve crop yields in the frame of sustainable agriculture. They could include using 'new generation' controlled-release fertilisers to optimise plant nutrition or applying a collection of unrelated substances and beneficial microorganisms with activity as 'biostimulants'. In this paper, some examples of these approaches will be discussed, with reference to recent reviews for further reading.