Project Components

The objective of the project is “Globally significant agro-biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change are embedded in agricultural and rural development policies and practices at national and local levels in Tajikistan.”

The country is one of the centers of origin for cultivated plants worldwide. Diverse climatic, geological, and environmental conditions gave rise to this rich biodiversity, best indicated by almost 9,800 plant accessions recorded in Tajikistan. Many of the landraces and their wild relatives potentially house resistances and tolerances to pests, diseases, and to abiotic stresses. As such, they constitute a valuable source of genetic material for future germplasm enhancement programmes around the world.

The project seeks to remove the barriers to conservation and adaptation of the globally significant agro-biodiversity of Tajikistan by a combination of interventions targeting capacity development (at systemic, institutional and individual level), in situ and ex situ agro-biodiversity conservation measures and market development in support of socio-ecological adaptation to climate change. Managing for socio-ecological resilience recognizes the opportunities provide by effectively managed agricultural ecosystems in supporting the environment and dependent communities to absorb shocks, regenerate and reorganize so as to maintain key functions, economic prosperity, social wellbeing and political stability. Strengthening the capacity of farmers to anticipate and plan for climate related changes while buying time for ecological recovery through effective local ecosystem management creates powerful and cost-effective opportunities for meaningful action to cope with unavoidable climate change impacts.

Ex situ conservation of the Poaceae family is relatively straightforward and has already been the objective of collections made by various research organizations (e.g., CGIAR Centers and national bodies such as the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and US Department of Agriculture) concerned with the improvement of major food crops such as wheat, barley, forages and legumes. Seeds of wild relatives of these crops are straightforward to collect and conserve in gene banks at low temperature, with periodic growing out to ensure their viability. A much more intractable problem is in situ conservation of recalcitrant species, i.e., species that cannot be conserved as seeds at low temperature. The in situ conservation proposed in this project is therefore a modification of the specialized nursery methodology, making use of the locally adapted germplasm currently grown in home gardens throughout the country.

The project will concentrate on the conservation in situ of perennial germplasm and understanding the impact of climate variability by using the Homologue Approach, where the climates that will be encountered in 2050 already exist at lower altitudes. The project will select sites using an environmental agro-climatic model such that sites will be paired with their year 2050 homologues. For each village selected, another village will be chosen to represent its year 2050 climatic homologue. For example, by interpolation on the data of the 18 global circulation models, the temperatures of Khishkat, in the Zeravshan Valley in central-west Tajikistan, will increase by about 3 degrees by 2050.

The adiabatic lapse rate is 6°C per 1000 m, so a site 500 m lower than Khishkat today has a temperature climate the same that Khishkat will have in 2050. That is, Khishkat at 1440 m altitude will have roughly the same temperature regime that Pendzhikent, at 990 m altitude, has today. A census on varieties growing at Pendzhikent will show what adaptation will be required at Khishkat over the next 40 years. Homologue approach can be applied to determine which present day communities will be like our selected communities in 50 years time in the face of climate change. Those identified communities and farmers would then also get to see and gradually prepare for their futures in terms of agro-biodiversity. Germplasm maintenance and exchange will allow farmers to gradually adapt to new conditions via the introduction of cultivars from homologous sites. People from, for example, site 1a will be able to visit and learn from site 1b, which will represent conditions at site 1a in the year 2050. The 18 GCMs provide best bet estimates of how climate will change at the selected sites. The visitors will see their own futures; they will learn what they will and will not be able to grow; they will be able to see if conditions are the same, worse, or better, and in which ways, and establish what they will have as options in terms of agro-biodiversity.

Over the next decades, they will be able to obtain the germplasm that they will gradually need more and more. Forewarned through the project use of Homologue approach, farmers and communities will be forearmed. Under the Homologue Approach, the initially selected communities can also “donate” to the future; and in so doing conserve their present agro-biodiversity by improving the futures of their own as well as other communities. As a result of the application of the Homologue Approach, it is anticipated that long-term adaptive measures will include effective policy implementation for the conservation of agro-biodiversity, capacity building for improved resources and agricultural management, and for management, largely in situ, of genetic resources. A project emphasis on agro-enterprise development (both nationally and internationally and perhaps in the area of certified organic fair-trade fruit and nut products) will seek to increase farmers’ financial returns and ensure meaningful community based participation.