Seed-microbiome interactions: Mechanistic insights and utilization toward seed performance for sustainable agriculture.

Agriculture production is directly dependent on climate change and weather. Possible changes in temperature, precipitation and CO2 concentration are expected to significantly impact crop growth and ultimately we lose our crop productivity and indirectly affect the sustainable food availability issue. The overall impact of climate change on worldwide food production is considered to be low to moderate with successful adaptation and adequate irrigation. Climate change has a serious impact on the availability of various resources on the earth especially water, which sustains life on this planet. The global food security situation and outlook remains delicately imbalanced amid surplus food production and the prevalence of hunger, due to the complex interplay of social, economic, and ecological factors that mediate food security outcomes at various human and institutional scales. Weather aberration poses complex challenges in terms of increased variability and risk for food producers and the energy and water sectors. Changes in the biosphere, biodiversity and natural resources are adversely affecting human health and quality of life. Throughout the 21st century, India is projected to experience warming above global level. India will also begin to experience more seasonal variation in temperature with more warming in the winters than summers. Longevity of heat waves across India has extended in recent years with warmer night temperatures and hotter days, and this trend is expected to continue. Strategic research priorities are outlined for a range of sectors that underpin global food security, including: agriculture, ecosystem services from agriculture, climate change, international trade, water management solutions, the water-energy-food security nexus, service delivery to smallholders and women farmers, and better governance models and regional priority setting. There is a need to look beyond agriculture and invest in affordable and suitable farm technologies if the problem of food insecurity is to be addressed in a sustainable manner. Introduction Globally, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. This vulnerability is relatively higher in India in view of the large population depending on agriculture and poor coping capabilities of small and marginal farmers. Impacts of climate change pose a serious threat to food security. “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food Summit, 1996). This definition gives rise to four dimensions of food security: availability of food, accessibility (economically and physically), utilization (the way it is used and assimilated by the human body) and stability of these three dimensions. According to the United Nations, in 2015, there are still 836 million people in the world living in extreme poverty (less than USD1.25/day) (UN, 2015). And according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), at least 70 percent of the very poor live in rural areas, most of them depending partly (or completely) on agriculture for their livelihoods. It is estimated that 500 million smallholder farms in the developing world are supporting almost 2 billion people, and in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa these small farms produce about 80 percent of the food consumed. Climate change threatens to reverse the progress made so far in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. As highlighted by the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), climate change augments and intensifies risks to food security for the most vulnerable countries and populations. Few of the major risks induced by climate change, as identified by IPCC have direct consequences for food security (IPCC, 2007). These are mainly to loss of rural livelihoods and income, loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, livelihoods loss of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems and food insecurity (breakdown of food systems). Rural farmers, whose livelihood depends on the use of natural resources, are likely to bear the brunt of adverse impacts. Most of the crop simulation model runs and experiments under elevated temperature and carbon dioxide indicate that by 2030, a 3-7% decline in the yield of principal cereal crops like rice and wheat is likely in India by adoption of current production technologies. Global warming impacts growth, reproduction and yields of food and horticulture crops, increases crop water requirement, causes more soil erosion, increases thermal stress on animals leading to decreased milk yields and change the distribution and breeding season of fisheries. Fast changing climatic conditions, shrinking land, water and other natural resources with rapid growing population around the globe has put many challenges before us (Mukherjee, 2014). Food is going to be second most challenging issue for mankind in time to come. India will also begin to experience more seasonal variation in temperature with more warming in the winters than summers (Christensen et al., 2007). Climate change is posing a great threat to agriculture and food security in India and it's subcontinent. Water is the most critical agricultural input in India, as 55% of the total cultivated areas do not have irrigation facilities. Currently we are able to secure food supplies under these varying conditions. Under the threat of climate variability, our food grain production system becomes quite comfortable and easily accessible for local people. India's food grain production is estimated to rise 2 per cent in 2020-21 crop years to an all-time high of 303.34 million tonnes on better output of rice, wheat, pulse and coarse cereals amid good monsoon rains last year. In the 2019-20 crop year, the country's food grain output (comprising wheat, rice, pulses and coarse cereals) stood at a record 297.5 million tonnes (MT). Releasing the second advance estimates for 2020-21 crop year, the agriculture ministry said foodgrain production is projected at a record 303.34 MT. As per the data, rice production is pegged at record 120.32 MT as against 118.87 MT in the previous year. Wheat production is estimated to rise to a record 109.24 MT in 2020-21 from 107.86 MT in the previous year, while output of coarse cereals is likely to increase to 49.36 MT from 47.75 MT. Pulses output is seen at 24.42 MT, up from 23.03 MT in 2019-20 crop year. In the non-foodgrain category, the production of oilseeds is estimated at 37.31 MT in 2020-21 as against 33.22 MT in the previous year. Sugarcane production is pegged at 397.66 MT from 370.50 MT in the previous year, while cotton output is expected to be higher at 36.54 million bales (170 kg each) from 36.07. This production figure seem to be sufficient for current population, but we need to improve more and more with vertical farming and advance agronomic and crop improvement tools for future burgeoning population figure under the milieu of climate change issue. Our rural mass and tribal people have very limited resources and they sometime complete depend on forest microhabitat. To order to ensure food and nutritional security for growing population, a new strategy needs to be initiated for growing of crops in changing climatic condition. The country has a large pool of underutilized or underexploited fruit or cereals crops which have enormous potential for contributing to food security, nutrition, health, ecosystem sustainability under the changing climatic conditions, since they require little input, as they have inherent capabilities to withstand biotic and abiotic stress. Apart from the impacts on agronomic conditions of crop productions, climate change also affects the economy, food systems and wellbeing of the consumers (Abbade, 2017). Crop nutritional quality become very challenging, as we noticed that, zinc and iron deficiency is a serious global health problem in humans depending on cereal-diet and is largely prevalent in low-income countries like Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and South-east Asia. We report inefficiency of modern-bred cultivars of rice and wheat to sequester those essential nutrients in grains as the reason for such deficiency and prevalence (Debnath et al., 2021). Keeping in mind the crop yield and nutritional quality become very daunting task to our food security issue and this can overcome with the proper and time bound research in cognizance with the environment. Threat and challenges In recent years, climate change has become a debatable issue worldwide. South Asia will be one of the most adversely affected regions in terms of impacts of climate change on agricultural yield, economic activity and trading policies. Addressing climate change is central for global future food security and poverty alleviation. The approach would need to implement strategies linked with developmental plans to enhance its adaptive capacity in terms of climate resilience and mitigation. Over time, there has been a visible shift in the global climate change initiative towards adaptation. Adaptation can complement mitigation as a cost-effective strategy to reduce climate change risks. The impact of climate change is projected to have different effects across societies and countries. Mitigation and adaptation actions can, if appropriately designed, advance sustainable development and equity both within and across countries and between generations. One approach to balancing the attention on adaptation and mitigation strategies is to compare the costs and benefits of both the strategies. The most imminent change is the increase in the atmospheric temperatures due to increase levels of GHGs (Green House Gases) i.e. carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) etc into the atmosphere. The global mean annual temperatures at the end of the 20th

The SIRS is a mega-project within the Northern Eurasia Earth SciencePartnership Initiative (NEESPI), which coordinates interdisciplinary, national andinternational activities in Northern Eurasia that follow the Earth System ScienceProgram (ESSP) approach. Under the direction of the InternationalGeosphere–Biosphere Program (IGBP), SIRS is one of the Integrated RegionalStudies (IRS) that aims to investigate environmental change in Siberia under thecurrent environment of global change, and the potential impact on Earth systemdynamics [1]. The regions of interest are those that may function as ‘choke orswitch points’ for the global Earth system, where changes in regional biophysical,biogeochemical and anthropogenic components may have significantconsequences for the Earth system at the global scale. Siberia is a large andsignificant region that may compel change [2].Regional consequences of global warming (e.g. anomalous increases in coldseason temperatures) have already been documented for Siberia [3]. This result isalso supported by climate modeling results for the 20th–22nd centuries [4].Future climatic change threatens Siberia with the shift of permafrost boundariesnorthward, dramatic changes in land cover (redistribution among boreal forest,wetlands, tundra, and steppe zones often precipitated by fire regime change) andthe entire hydrological regime of the territory [5–8]. These processes feed back toand influence climate dynamics through the exchange of energy, water,greenhouse gases and aerosols [9]. Even though there have been a handful ofnational and international projects focused on the Siberian environment, scientistshave minimal knowledge about the processes that control change in thisunderstudied region, particularly those concerning the primary components thatinfluence regional climate (i.e. cloud cover, precipitation) and responses andfeedbacks to and from terrestrial and aquatic systems. This provides a strongimpetus for the SIRS project.SIRS was initiated at a boreal forest conference in Krasnoyarsk in 2002 under theauspices of the IGBP and ESSP regional strategy by Will Steffen (IGBP) and the

In recent years, the urgent issue of how climate change affects food security has emerged as a significant concern. This paper highlights the complex interplay between food security and global climate change by examining the role of climate change in the food system, the interrelationship between food security and global climate change, and adaptation strategies to address these challenges. With a comprehensive analysis focused on China, this study systematically examines the complex dynamics linking food security and global climate change. The findings reveal important insights: (1) Global climate change is exacerbating insecurity in the food system and increasing its impact on Chinese food production; (2) Food demand emerges as the main driver of global climate change, while redistribution of food production factors exacerbates the climate crisis. (3) A synergistic and sustainable response can be achieved through a multi-pronged approach to addressing global climate change while ensuring food security and micro level, resilience. To effectively combat global climate change and ensure food security, this study highlights the critical importance of using micro-technologies for grain storage, prioritizing ecological building, pursuing a market-based approach at the macro level, and improving the food policy framework. In the context of global climate change, this study argues for a paradigm shift in food security research and a transition from a singular disciplinary, dimensional, and resource-centered approach to a multidisciplinary, multifactorial, and systematic integration of research. This transformative approach aims to promote a low-carbon and efficient food system that’s resilient to the challenges of global climate change.

Ecological responses, adaptation and mechanisms of mangrove wetland ecosystem to global climate change and anthropogenic activities

Water availability, access, and use has ensured food and livelihood security for millions. In the future, food and livelihood security may be challenged due to global environmental changes, particularly global climatic changes, that evidence has gradually shown to be appearing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that the global mean surface temperature will rise by 1.4–5.8°C by 2100 due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Climate variability is also projected to increase, leading to uncertainty in the onset of monsoons and more frequent extreme weather events, such as more severe droughts and floods. These environmental changes are known to affect all aspects of the hydrological cycle, which in turn may alter the balance between food demand and supply in time and space in many parts of the world. Regions such as South Asia and Africa are expected to be particularly vulnerable to these environmental changes due to their large population, predominance of agriculture, and limited resource base. The potential impact of climatic changes on the quality of fruits, vegetables, cereals and medicinal plants can have a negative impact on emerging trade opportunities for these commodities in many countries. To ensure future water and food security, greater attention is now needed on adaptations to climatic change, which calls for increased diversification, improved land use and natural resource management policies, increased use of biofuels, improved risk management through early warning systems and crop insurance, and wastewater recycling in agriculture.

Global demand for animal products is extremely increasing in the future period, which mainly because of improvement in the global standard of living. In the meantime, global climate change is a pressure to animal production due to the impact on quality of forages, water availability, animal and milk production, animal health, animal reproduction and biodiversity. This paper reviews the impacts of climate change on animal production and converse contributions of animal production sector to global climate variation and specific climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in animal production sector. Global climate change will affect animal production and consequently food security mainly in tropical regions. This paper also reviewed that, converse contribution of animal production sector in emission of GHGs to the atmosphere for global climate change. Therefore, global climate change adaptation, mitigation practices and policy frameworks are critical to protect animal production.

Collectif Argos: Climate Refugees

Global Climate and Environmental Change is an international hot field. To enhance native awareness on climate change is one mission of "State Policy and Action on Climate Change 2009 in China". As an implement, a course on Global Climate and Environmental Change has been opened in Shanghai Normal University since 2005. The course includes three fields. In the first field, it is introduced on which problems and harms have been caused from Global Climate and Environmental Changes according to UNEP Year Books 2003~2013. In the second field, to introduce the Earth System and Climate-Environment Change. In the third part, the hot climate-environmental issues are analyzed and discussed. By joining this course, the students have understanding earth system science and global change. It helped students to set up the view of ecological civilization of the harmonious development between human and nature, inspire students responsibility to protect the earth. During past 8 year, there were 4 to 5 classes opening for different levels in Shanghai Normal University for each year, more than 1000 students joined the study in the course.

This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilised as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions directly or indirectly affect food systems. There can be no doubt that GHG emissions ought to be reduced to enhance food security. This would seem to suggest a global food security scheme that apportions GHG emission quotas among all states. To consider such a global scheme for dealing with GHG emissions relating to food systems, it is important to provide a principle of justice for food security under global climate change. A relevant principle of justice applying to the scheme must be one that provides for food systems to meet the basic needs of the global population. Furthermore, the principle of justice should incorporate the value of fairness. In this context: (1) the parties concerned under the global food security scheme are states; (2) as part of the ideal of justice, fairness does not undermine the requirement that the basic needs of all people must be met; when determining the fair burdens, a fair allocation of GHG emission quotas should be sensitive to (3) each state’s responsibility for its (past) GHG emissions and (4) its (potential) effort to reduce the emissions in practice. Given these pointers, the Lockean proviso – or, more precisely, its egalitarian version – is a relevant principle of food security justice under global climate change in four corresponding respects. Firstly, the Lockean proviso can provide legitimate normative guidance for each state. Secondly, the Lockean proviso suggests that a state has: (1) a right to a food system that secures its citizens basic needs; and (2) a duty to promote the basic needs of other people. Thirdly, the Lockean proviso can be deployed not only as a principle of global justice, but also as a principle of intergenerational justice in the context of global climate change. Finally, the Lockean proviso enables us to count the reduction of GHG emissions by each state as ‘the fruits of its labours’: this reduction in financial burdens imposed on people can be regarded as ‘savings.’ Specifically, a state’s financial burden for supporting the global food security scheme, determined by its required contribution to the restitution, is mitigated by the corresponding value that the reduction achieves. These points demonstrate that the Lockean proviso is not merely an ideal of justice for food security under global climate change, but offers tangible benefits as well.

In this chapter, a framework for best practice for climate change adaption in Africa is presented, predominantly from the water and natural resources perspective to systematically chart out ways for adaptive capacity building. Africa’s vulnerability to climate change and variability has direct impacts on water availability, access and use. Water is the source of food and livelihood security for millions of its population. The future of food and livelihood security is likely to be challenged due to global environmental changes, particularly global climatic changes, and emerging evidence has gradually demonstrated this fact. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that global and regional surface temperature and precipitation are likely to change with mixed degrees of severity due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and other anthropogenic gas emissions. There is high level of consensus on the likely effect of this on all aspects of the hydrological cycle, which in turn may alter the balance between water availability, food demand and supply in time and space in many parts of the world. Climate variability is also projected to increase, leading to uncertainty in the onset of rainy seasons and more frequent extreme weather events, such as more severe droughts and floods. Africa is particularly vulnerable to these environmental changes due to a predominance of rainfed agriculture, limited resource base and weak structural setups to monitor and mitigate climate changes. In the quest for future water and food security, greater attention must now be paid to adaptations to climatic change with a livelihood-centered approach of integrated natural resources and water management, which calls for increased diversification, improved land use and natural resource management interventions, increased use of renewable energy resources, improved risk management through early warning systems and crop insurance, and wastewater reuse for agriculture, among others.

After a first foresight study on World food security in 2050 (Agrimonde), CIRAD and INRA have turned their attention to a new foresight exercise on 'Land use and food security in 2050' (Agrimonde-Terra). This new study seeks to highlight levers that could modify ongoing land-use patterns for improved food and nutrition security. Agrimonde-Terra proposes a trend analysis on the global context, climate change, food diets, urban-rural linkages, farm structures, cropping and livestock systems, and explores five scenarios. Three scenarios entitled Metropolization, Regionalization and Households are based on current competing trends identified in most world regions. Two scenarios entitled Healthy and Communities involve potential breaks that could change the entire land use and food security system. The Healthy scenario is the only one that makes it possible to achieve sustainable world food and nutrition security in 2050. Nevertheless, current trends in agricultural and food systems in most parts of the world converge towards the Metropolization scenario, which is not sustainable in terms of both land use and human health. Therefore, changing the course of ongoing trends in favor of sustainable land uses and healthy food systems will be one of the main challenges of the next decades. It will require systemic transformation, strong and coherent public policies across sectors and scales, and consistent actions from a wide range of actors. This foresight provides a large information base on land uses, food systems and food security and constitutes a tool box to stimulate debates, imagine new policies and innovations. It aims to empower decision makers, stakeholders, non-governmental organizations and researchers to develop a constructive dialogue on the futures of land uses and food security at either world, regional and national levels.

Gaining Acceptance of Novel Plant Breeding Technologies.

Sustainable aquafeed and aquaculture production systems as impacted by challenges of global food security and climate change

One of the most dynamic natural processes on the planetary scale are changes in the global climate caused by changed chemical composition of atmosphere, with the corresponding demonstration of greenhouse effect. Global geosystem monitoring is most up-to-date and actually realizable on the scale of individual ecological regions. However, natural processes and events on the regional hierarchic level are characterized by the greatest diversity and high discreteness, therefore the regional response of global climatic changes inevitably takes the form of multiple reactions of vegetation, soils and landscapes as a whole to background climatic signals. The regional and local levels of geo-ecological prognoses still have not been developed enough due to insufficiency of factual material and methodical difficulties of the transfer of hydro-climatic prognosis from global to regional and local.The report expounds the main statements of original topo-ecological concept of prediction: “Global Changes on the Local Level”, as a basis of terrestrial bio-ecological and geosystem monitoring under global anthropogenic climatic changes. This concept makes it possible to carry out local empirical simulation of the regional bioclimatic trend and thereby reveal the mechanisms of transmission of global and regional climate signals to the local level. Objects of research are forest and forest-steppe landscape-zonal systems of the headwater of the Volga River basin. They are included in the boreal ecotone of Northern Eurasia as the territory most sensitive to climate change and, accordingly, very favorable for the development of theory and methods of environmental monitoring. The conservation and reproduction of forest resources under changing climatic conditions at the southern boundary of temperate forest zone, where forest communities are in conditions close to critical, is one of the fundamental ecological problems. The strategic goal of monitoring research is to reveal the environmental potential of sustainablility of forest ecosystems in the context of modern global warming.

Global climate change is a growing concern for Bangladesh. To evaluate the global climate change effects on environmental changes and agricultural production in Bangladesh, long-term data on selected climatic variables (1948–2006), agricultural production (1960–2006), and population growth (1940–2008) were collected, organized and analyzed. Results suggested that although Bangladesh emits less than 0.2% of the global carbon dioxide (CO2), it is nevertheless facing the impact of global climate change. Average air temperature was found to be increased @ 0.7°C per decade across Bangladesh. As expected, the rainfall distribution varied regionally over time. Total average rainfall increased in the north-eastern (2.6 cm/year) region but decreased in the south-eastern region (1.4 cm/year) or remained same in the north-western and south-western regions of the country. Average sunshine duration decreased by 36 min/decade in between 1962 and 2000. While agricultural land saturation (150% cropping intensity) with increasing population growth (1.8%) abounds, food production in Bangladesh under changing climates has improved over time. Total area under rice production slightly decreased, the yield, however, increased (85%). In contrast, total area under wheat ( 2%), and oilseed production increased over time. The yield increased from 2 Mg/ha for wheat, 1 to >5 Mg/ha for maize, and 2.5–14 Mg/ha for potato. Total area under jute (>8 to <4%) and legume production decreased but the yield per unit of land increased over time. However, with increasing population, degraded land quality, and potential global warming, agriculture is seen as one of the major vulnerabilities facing Bangladesh in near future. More specifically, a progressive decline in sunshine duration (25%) over a period of 30 years has become a growing concern for agriculture in terms of reduced photosynthesis and food security.