While the majority of the world’s efforts to stem the impacts of climate change have been focused on attacking the root cause, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is seeking to ameliorate one of the most pressing symptoms: the effects of climate change on crops. 

The Trust announced a project today that seeks a climate-proof crop strain, able to take the floods, droughts, temperature swings and other impacts of increased global food temperatures, while still meeting the food yields required by a global population. Though hampered by a lack of concrete information on specific traits in individual crop strains, the effort is to make a comprehensive profile of candidate plants within 2 years.

The Trust, better known for its “doomsday vault“ on the remote island of Svalbard that stores viable samples of plant seeds against global loss of biodiversity, fills an important niche in protecting the global food supply. While corporately funded efforts to improve the fitness of food crops generally focus on pesticide resistance, it may be that as the effects of climate change become more pronounced, private enterprises will build upon the GCDT’s research.