S21 - Session P1 - Combat climate change with biodiversity: high throughput phenotyping of the banana diversity for suitability in current and future agro-ecozones

Authors: Clara Gambart *, Rony Swennen, Sebastien Carpentier

Banana is integrated in a wide range of cropping systems, ranging from monocultures to intercropping- and mixed farming systems. Changing weather conditions challenge these production systems. More temperature extremes, increased ambient CO 2 levels and erratic rainfall patterns impose increasing pressure, especially on low input systems, on which unfavorable environmental conditions cannot be easily compensated. However, mining the existing genetic diversity for cultivars better adapted to the future agro-environment, will give us solutions to adapt our farming advice to reduce and spread the risks and so alleviate yield gaps. To be able to recommend the right cultivar for the right environment, we developed a strategy to phenotype the banana gene bank of Bioversity International under current and future climate scenario's. Growth monitoring of 67 different cultivars, belonging to 19 genetic subgroups, revealed significant diversity between and even within subgroups. While the optimal average day temperature of the well-known dessert banana is 26°C, a diverse spectrum was observed in our dataset ranging from 21 to over 29 °C. As climate projections expect average day temperatures to rise by over 3 °C in the next 50 years, certain cultivars will reach a danger zone. Nevertheless, 52.5 % of the screened cultivars are predicted to perform equally good or even increase their productivity in future climates. This study clearly demonstrates the potential of intraspecific biodiversity in safeguarding food production under current and future challenging climatic conditions and we encourage stakeholders to further investigate this biological treasure. Nevertheless, model uncertainty and weather unpredictability require the implementation of buffering techniques to establish resilient production systems.