Global Food Security: A Truncated Yield of Underutilized and Orphan Crops

Abstract

Orphan crops and underutilized crops are considered as the major staple food crops in many developing countries because of their particular role in food security, nutrition, and foremost income generation to resource-poor farmers and consumers. Alike other crops, orphan crops are also categorized under cereals, legumes, root crops, and fruit crops. Orphan crops are in general more adapted and acclimatized to the innumerable abiotic stress than the major crops of the world. However, due to lack of exposure to new era of biotechnological practices and techniques, orphan crops produce inferior qualitative and quantitative yields. According to crop science society of America data indicated 12,650 edible plant species exist and only 30 of them are being utilized by 95% population of world. These inclined selections of limited crop production will lead to the breakdown of United Nations goal of ending global hunger by 2030. Biotechnology interventions and its new era expansions in the field like tissue culture, marker-assisted breeding, in vitro gene modulations etc. are some important capacities to upsurge the productivity of planting material and, hence, could eventually increase the global consumption. These techniques have contributed tremendously to the safeguarding, improvement, and distribution of orphan crops, especially the vegetatively propagated crops. Market surveys revealed these orphan crops are an important source of household incomes and substantially contribute to global poverty reduction. The robust research is required to fill knowledge gaps and snags for most of the identified species as no concrete scientific data is globally available.