Abstract
Humanity faces significant challenges to agriculture and human nutrition, and changes in climate are predicted to make such challenges greater in the future. Neglected and underutilized crops may play a role in mitigating and addressing such challenges. Breadfruit is a long-lived tree crop that is a nutritious, carbohydrate-rich staple, which is a priority crop in this regard. A fuzzy-set modeling approach was applied, refined, and validated for breadfruit to determine its current and future potential productivity. Hawai'i was used as a model system, with over 1,200 naturalized trees utilized to calibrate a habitat suitability model and 56 producer sites used to validate the model. The parameters were then applied globally on 17 global climate models at the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 global climate projections for 2070. Overall, breadfruit suitability increases in area and in quality, with larger increases occurring in the RCP 8.5 projection. Current producing regions largely remain unchanged in both projections, indicating relative stability of production potential in current growing regions. Breadfruit, and other tropical indigenous food crops present strong opportunities for cultivation and food security risk management strategies moving forward.
Highlights
Humanity faces multiple challenges for the future of food production
The initial breadfruit model that utilized parameters defined by EcoCrop proved to be highly restrictive compared to the distribution of naturalized trees surveyed in Hawai’i especially in terms of rainfall and soil drainage (Table 1)
Less significant changes were recommended for temperature and pH, and no changes to solar radiation were suggested
Summary
Humanity faces multiple challenges for the future of food production. By mid-21st century, the world population is expected to reach nine billion people with associated pressure on resources [1], increasing demands on food and nutrition while rates of hunger and malnutrition are on the rise [2]. Changes in global weather are expected to negatively impact food yields, especially the major commodity crops that provide much of the global food supply [3,4], and nutrient quality and density of crops [5,6]. Largely correlated to poverty and insufficient access to enough nutritious food is increasing [2,7]. Some 2 billion people are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition [8,9].
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