As the world population is rapidly growing, food demand is also rising tremendously. With few challenges like drought, pests, and diseases along with climate change, food production is a big challenge. Therefore farmers need to change strategies and embrace new tactics for high productivity. One of the ways to secure food security is investing in agrigenomics, and it offers numerous gains to farmers.
What is Agrigenomics?
Agrigenomics is also referred to as agricultural genomics and is the application of genomics in agricultural production. With agrigenomics solutions, farmers can promote sustainable food production to meet the growing population’s needs. With improved technologies, agrigenomics has made it possible for farmers to make wise breeding and cultivation decisions.
Reasons to invest in Agrigenomics& Genotyping solutions
- Generating crops that need less water
Traditionally, most crops grew in regions that experienced high rainfall. Nowadays, rains are becoming inadequate, thus less water for irrigation. This way, you must grow crops that are water efficient. With agrigenomics, you can point out genes that affect the water efficiency use of a crop. After that, you can introduce the genes in food crops by either breeding or genetic modifications.
- Creating a herd of healthy cattle
Agrigrenomics plays a significant role in creating high-quality and disease-resistant herds. You can achieve this through various analyses. Some ways to achieve it include; Augmentation of needed traits, genetic merit prediction, or proper tuning of particular breeds. Only with genomics can you select a perfect herd that is more productive.
- Generation of high temperature-resistant crops
Due to climate change, global warming is a big challenge affecting farmers. Many regions of the world are now experiencing high temperatures. Increased temperature affects most crops. For that reason, farmers should adopt crops that can withstand high heat. Through genomics, you can select genes that offer heat tolerance. You can then introduce such genes to main food crops using genetic engineering.
- Boosting aquaculture
Aquaculture species are part of the agricultural aspects that boost food production. If these fields are affected, production is affected too. Genomics makes it possible to create species that grow fast and are disease resistant. This way, there will be enough protein supply to meet the population’s needs.
- Creation of crops that survive harsh climates
Due to climate changes, climatic conditions are now unpredictable. With such changes, food production has been affected globally. For instance, your region might always experience adequate rainfall, but the climatic change alters your food production. However, agrigenomics solutions can help you create crops that withstand harsh conditions.
- Makes crops pest and disease resistant
Pests and diseases are responsible for almost 30 percent of food yield losses worldwide. Although you can utilize chemicals to reduce the losses, pests and diseases will still affect yields. These problems affect most African parts due to the need for more techniques. However, with genomics, it’s possible to create pest and disease-resistant crops through genome and genetics interventions.
Final thoughts
The world population is growing every day. To produce enough food to cater to the needs of the growing population might become a challenge soon. This is because cultivation lands are now replaced by real estate. Additionally, pests, diseases, and drought are dropping yields. To cut the fears of agriculture and improve production, adopting agrigenomics is the best way forward.
