BEIRUT: Lebanon could potentially mitigate the disastrous impacts of climate change on food resources by exploiting the near relatives of crop species that are already cultivated, experts and policymakers said Monday.

“We are all in the middle of grappling with a challenge which is going to get harder and harder in the future, as resources are limited,” Salah Hajj Hasan, an adviser to the agriculture minister, told representatives from Egypt, Iran and Jordan.

The officials convened at a Beirut hotel to discuss the preliminary stages of a regional plan to adapt crop yields by breeding them with wild varieties in a bid to assuage the effects of global warming.

It is believed that the wild varieties of already cultivated crop species might contain genes resistant to the stressful conditions of climate change.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 20, 2013, on page 4.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Aug-20/227925-experts-look-to-wild-plants-to-cope-with-climate-change.ashx#ixzz2ciEboyRZ
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)