The Green Revolution and Crop Biodiversity

doi:10.1017/9781108668675.009

6 - The Green Revolution and Crop Biodiversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2019

Edited by

Peter Raven and

Partha Dasgupta: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Peter Raven: Affiliation:
Missouri Botanical Garden
Anna McIvor: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Summary

crop diversity in the fields of the developing world has changed fundamentally over the past 200 years with the intensification and commercialisation of agriculture. This process accelerated with the advent of the Green Revolution (GR) in the 1960s when public sector researchers and donors explicitly promoted the international transfer of improved seed varieties to farmers in developing countries. Since the GR, the germplasm that dominates the area planted to the major cereals has shifted from ‘landraces’ or the locally adapted populations that farmers have historically selected from seed they save, to ‘modern varieties’ or the more widely adapted seed types produced by scientific plant breeding programmes and purchased by farmers.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Biological Extinction
New Perspectives
, pp. 175 - 192
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108668675.009 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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