ABSTRACT
Scientific effort and investment in safeguarding and promoting the world’s species richness for the purpose of a better nourished planet is gaining new momentum as it is realized that the current global agricultural and food system is meeting neither global development goals for nutrition nor for environmental sustainability. Greater utilization of plant and animal agrobiodiversity, whether wild or reared and cultivated on-farm, and often maintained by farmers over centuries due to desirable cultural, economic and resilience characteristics, is a powerful strategy in the quest to not only feed the world’s growing population, but also to ensure production of a more diversified and nutritionally balanced basket of food which at the same time is more environmentally sustainable, culturally acceptable, socially equitable and responsive to climatic changes.
