Crop Breeding: Renewing the Global Commitment

This working paper argues for a renewed global commitment to crop breeding to meet 2050 food demands. It advocates for increasing R&D funding in low- and medium-income countries from 0.5% to 1.0% of agricultural production value, prioritizing conventional breeding enhanced by marker-assisted and genomics-assisted technologies over GM crops for yield growth, and increasing research into 'orphan crops' like sorghum and millet.

• To avoid the net expansion of harvested cropland, crop yields must grow one third more over the next 44 years than they did in the previous 44 years. This is necessary to close a 69 percent gap between 2006 production levels and the projected needs for 2050, based on current population growth, diets, and food waste rates.
• Conventional breeding is considered more critical than genetic modification (GM) for overall yield growth because it can address complex, multigene traits and their interactions with the environment, whereas current GM technology typically targets traits controlled by a single gene or a small number of genes.
• Marker-assisted breeding and genomics-assisted breeding can accelerate yield gains within conventional programs. Marker-assisted breeding uses DNA mapping to screen seedlings quickly, skipping crossing cycles, while genomics-assisted breeding uses DNA sequencing of a plant's complete set of DNA to identify complex gene combinations.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Crop Breeding: Renewing the Global Commitment. https://www.wri.org/research/crop-breeding-renewing-global-commitment

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Crop Breeding: Renewing the Global Commitment. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/crop-breeding-renewing-global-commitment.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Crop Breeding: Renewing the Global Commitment |url=https://www.wri.org/research/crop-breeding-renewing-global-commitment |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendcrop, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Crop Breeding: Renewing the Global Commitment}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/crop-breeding-renewing-global-commitment}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }