Promoting Diversity

We at DArT P/L propose to work towards increasing crop diversity on two levels:

• Within species, by providing tools that assist breeders in expanding the genetic diversity they can use productively, and
• Within the production system, by introducing new crops through accelerated breeding facilitated by whole-genome profiling.

Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) is a tool that can be used to determine the genetic differences underlying crop diversity. We believe it can play a major role in boosting the genetic diversity of agricultural systems.

Farmers worldwide are confronted with two opposing forces:

• The growing of increasingly standardised agricultural commodities, and
• The growing of diverse crops to ensure year-to-year production and income security.

Globalisation has increasingly turned agricultural products into commodities. This has resulted in increased production, increased choices (through trade rather than crop diversification) and lower prices for customers, particularly in rich countries. However, this development has also had some undesirable consequences:

• The industry's need to standardise products can easily result in an erosion of crop genetic diversity. Excessive genetic homogeneity of cultivars is dangerous; yet breeding new cultivars is a costly and time-consuming process.
• Important products with small markets are increasingly neglected, and
• Long supply chains create unnecessary environmental costs.