Publications

Global warming and climate change is now perceived to be the greatest threat to agriculture production and food security in the 21st century. Nobel Prize winner, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by means of the four assessment reports that have been released to date (IPCC 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007), has shown scientific evidence that i) temperatures have been increasing during the second half of the 20th century, and that ii) these changes are driven to a considerable extent by increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. Agriculture contributes to a considerable extent to increases of GHGs (~12% contribution globally), and therefore to climate change (IPCC 2007), but it is also one of the most (if not the most) sensitive human activities to changes in climates. An increase of 2°C in temperatures will pose a strong pressure on existing crop varieties (temperature thresholds could be exceeded in highly niche-specific and/or temperaturesensitive crops), whilst shifts in rainfall patterns could significantly alter harvests by altering fruit filling periods and delaying vegetative growth, to not speak about the effects of increased CO2 concentrations, the effects on agricultural pests and diseases, and on soil quality, most of which are still highly uncertain and remain under- or unexplored.