Data-driven approaches can harness crop diversity to address heterogeneous needs for breeding products

Abstract

This perspective describes the opportunities and challenges of data-driven approaches for crop diversity management (genebanks and breeding) in the context of agricultural research for sustainable development in the Global South. Data-driven approaches build on larger volumes of data and flexible analyses that link different datasets across domains and disciplines. This can lead to more information-rich management of crop diversity, which can address the complex interactions between crop diversity, production environments, and socioeconomic heterogeneity and help to deliver more suitable portfolios of crop diversity to users with highly diverse demands. We describe recent efforts that illustrate the potential of data-driven approaches for crop diversity management. A continued investment in this area should fill remaining gaps and seize opportunities, including i) supporting genebanks to play a more active role in linking with farmers using data-driven approaches; ii) designing low-cost, appropriate technologies for phenotyping; iii) generating more and better gender and socioeconomic data; iv) designing information products to facilitate decision-making; and v) building more capacity in data science. Broad, well-coordinated policies and investments are needed to avoid fragmentation of such capacities and achieve coherence between domains and disciplines so that crop diversity management systems can become more effective in delivering benefits to farmers, consumers, and other users of crop diversity.

Current agricultural diversification strategies are already agroecological

“…It is estimated that 1.95 billion people have benefited from these technologies (Verma et al, 2022). Modern biotechnology provides options for diversification where a crop gene pool lacks needed diversity or is impossible to access (Van Etten et al, 2023).…”

A comparative study of plant phenotyping workflows based on three-dimensional reconstruction from multi-view images

“…The rise in global food demand [1][2][3], limited agricultural land [4][5][6], and climate change [7][8][9] have heightened the necessity for the quantitative evaluation of crop phenotypic information [10][11][12]. This approach would facilitate the development of efficient and robust agricultural management approaches, which are essential for addressing the abovementioned challenges in a data-driven manner [13,14]. Recent technological breakthroughs, particularly in next-generation sequencing, have facilitated the accumulation of omics data, including genomic and transcriptomic information [15][16][17].…”

A case of transdisciplinarity and collaborative decision making: the co‐construction of Gendered Food Product Profiles

“…9 A more holistic food system approach with attention to food democratisation of decision making regarding crop characteristics, informed by gender, social difference and place, are beginning to inform breeding programmes. 4,5,[10][11][12][13][14][15] Moreover, these initiatives require concerted, cross-disciplinary effort for the reconceptualisation of technological research due to the very nature of the problems they aim to addressin this case to create new varieties based on diverse and varied interests within the food system in a just and equitable way. 16 For research teams to deliver in this respect they must engage around the 'problem' in a meaningful way instead of rallying around specific disciplinary focus.…”

“…However, this context is changing, and the breeder is no longer regarded as the sole decision maker and ‘artist’ in crop breeding 9 . A more holistic food system approach with attention to food democratisation of decision making regarding crop characteristics, informed by gender, social difference and place, are beginning to inform breeding programmes 4,5,10‐15 . Moreover, these initiatives require concerted, cross‐disciplinary effort for the re‐conceptualisation of technological research due to the very nature of the problems they aim to address – in this case to create new varieties based on diverse and varied interests within the food system in a just and equitable way 16 .…”