MANILA, Philippines — Developing countries should put more investments in non-staple crops like eggplant and peanuts which are crucial in a second Green Revolution that can significantly reduce poverty and hunger amid the threatening climate change.

Global leaders in food production technology believe governments should no longer just increase production for the three major staples - rice, corn, and wheat.

But crops grown in non-irrigated areas and survive in drought or stressed climate and are nutrition-rich should also be given development priorities.

“The first Green Revolution was done in irrigated areas for the three cereals. We must now bring dryland cereals, green legumes. Investment must go up if you want to also look at nutritional security as part of food security,” said International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) Director General William D. Dar in a Crop Biotechnology Media Conference in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Dr. Clive James, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application (ISAAA) chairman, said more public institutions are seen to fund development of locally-grown crops in order to boost food security.

“In the beginning it was mainly the private sector (that developed corn biotechnology crops). Now you’ve got both public and private institutions. Then comes biotechnology crops from the public sector in developing countries giving balanced approach,” said James.

As global population is projected to reach to 9.2 billion in 2050, James said governments will be compelled to use both conventional breeding of crops and genetic modification (GM) since conventional breeding alone cannot feed people specially poorer countries.

Drought tolerance will be among the most important trait in crops as climate change may take the form of higher temperature and less water. Such trait is already being developed in GM corn and is also existent in some of the non-irrigated mandate crops of ICRISAT – peanut (groundnut), sorghum, chickpea (garbanzos), millet, and pigeon pea.

James said nitrogen use efficiency in crops is also being developed now.

“Nitrogen efficiency utilization in crops is expected to be available between 2015 to 2020.

Not only does nitrogen cause pollution in waterways. If you have run off land in waterways, it can cause pollution. By increasing nitrogen utilization, you’ll decrease the amount that’s going to pollute,” James said.

Crops with a reduction in emission of nitrous oxide is being done in Japan and India.

“We’re now doing a research on de-nitrification, so you don’t produce (pollutant) nitrous oxide for plants,” Dar said.

In the Philippines, the development of non-irrigated, high value crops will be important in reducing hunger. This includes the Bacillus thuringiensis eggplant which is set to be commercialized in the market perhaps by 2012 and a root crop, sweet potato, being developed by the Institute of Plant Breeding.

With the approach of developing culturally popular crops in specific countries, James said hunger can be solved much as how technology is able to solve a crisis as that of the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 arising from late blight in potato, a crop popularly consumed in Ireland. The Great Famine caused death of one million people and migration of another one million from Ireland.