Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
eas can be effectively used for generating livelihood in islands conditions.
However, up scaling of the research efforts are required to substantiate the
research findings.
7.9
HORTICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosys-
tem, biome or an entire planet. It is a measure of the health of ecosystems
and is a function of climate. Long term changes in climate is known to
have enormous impacts on plant diversity patterns in the past and are seen
as having significant current impacts. It is predicted that climate change
will remain one of the major drivers of biodiversity patterns in the future.
Even though, the biodiversity will be an important contribution to both
climate-change mitigation and adaptation. Consequently, conserving and
sustainably managing biodiversity is critical to addressing climate change.
About 2500 angiospermous species including 132 species of orchids,
120 species of ferns, 300 species of medicinal plants and more than hun-
dred species of fruits and vegetables are reported from different Islands.
However, CARI has made significant attempts for tapping biodiversity of
horticultural crops through generating information of nutritional value and
as well as in developing varieties of crops like Green Orchid (var. Pretty
Green Bay), Broad Dhaniya (var. CARI Broad Dhaniya), Sweet Potato
(CARI SP-1, CARI-SP-2) and Greater yam (CARI Yamini) (Sankaran et
al., 2012). But, the intense efforts are required to identify climate change
resilient plant species from these genetic resources.
7.10
SOIL MICROBES AN DCLIMATE CHANGE
Islands have rich diversity in microbial population, which is helping in
making equilibrium in nutrient cycling in islands ecosystem. Knowledge
of microbial diversity and functionality of the soil, and entomopathogens
are essential to understand soil health conditions and select potent microbes
or pathogens to augment soil nutrition status or develop broad-spectrum
bio-control agents. Some of the microbes were identified by CARI, which
can tolerate higher level of salinity and temperature showing their poten-
tial in isolating genes for such traits. However, the research efforts need to
