Biodiversity and Agriculture

One of the best investments we have for insuring the health of our food supply, is maintaining the diversity of plants and animals in ecosystems around the world. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.

“It’s important to have biologically diverse ecosystems for, for example, food. We’ve domesticated numerous plants over the millennia, but we still need biodiversity to maintain the way of agriculture we’ve chosen to adapt.”

Francesca Grifo is co-curator of the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History.

“One specific example that I can give you was back in the 1970s, a corn blight which is a fungus that attacks corn plants came to the US and about fifteen percent of our corn crop was lost by this attack. The corn that was grown at that time in the US was very much all the same. I mean it was like having the same sisters and brothers group in all of those cornfields. So what biologists had to do, in order to breed corn that could resist this pest was to go back to Mexico, go back to the place where corn once grew wild and, fortunately for us, still does grow wild in a reserve that was created shortly after this. And go there to say, we need this corn to bring it back and actually breed it into he corn that we’re producing, into the seed corn that we are going to give the farmers to put out in their fields, that will then be resistant to this disease. We need the wild corn to be the source of resistance for this disease that hit the US corn crop.

So maintaining a biodiverse ecosystem, with many varieties of plants and animals is like having a living insurance policy to help protect those crops and creatures we humans depend upon for our survival.

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Biodiversity and Agriculture

Biodiversity is one of the best ways to protect ourselves against natural threats to our food supply.
Air Date:06/03/1998
Scientist:
Transcript:

One of the best investments we have for insuring the health of our food supply, is maintaining the diversity of plants and animals in ecosystems around the world. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.

"It's important to have biologically diverse ecosystems for, for example, food. We've domesticated numerous plants over the millennia, but we still need biodiversity to maintain the way of agriculture we've chosen to adapt."

Francesca Grifo is co-curator of the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History.

"One specific example that I can give you was back in the 1970s, a corn blight which is a fungus that attacks corn plants came to the US and about fifteen percent of our corn crop was lost by this attack. The corn that was grown at that time in the US was very much all the same. I mean it was like having the same sisters and brothers group in all of those cornfields. So what biologists had to do, in order to breed corn that could resist this pest was to go back to Mexico, go back to the place where corn once grew wild and, fortunately for us, still does grow wild in a reserve that was created shortly after this. And go there to say, we need this corn to bring it back and actually breed it into he corn that we're producing, into the seed corn that we are going to give the farmers to put out in their fields, that will then be resistant to this disease. We need the wild corn to be the source of resistance for this disease that hit the US corn crop.

So maintaining a biodiverse ecosystem, with many varieties of plants and animals is like having a living insurance policy to help protect those crops and creatures we humans depend upon for our survival.

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.