Combating Climate Change for FNEE Security

International Climate Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium (ICRCGC) organized 11 annual workshops during the PAG conferences since 2012 including five workshops organized collaboratively with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (PAG 2012, 2016). A number of national and international platforms, particularly the FAO and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have also been engaged for the last few years in comprehensive and critical discussions on the impacts of climate change and the means to mitigate them. During these earlier meetings, current works to address climate change from around the world were presented. Recently, a team of ICRCGC members, constituting 40 scientists from 14 countries, has published a white paper on Application of genomics-assisted breeding for generation of climate resilient crops: progress and prospects (Front. Plant Sci. 6:563. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2015.00563), highlighting the opportunities and feasibility of new breeding approaches, resources and tools to mitigate the effects of climate change on crop productivity. It is high time now to have a global platform to follow an 'Innovation-Incubation-Implementation (I³)' approach to address security not only for Food and Nutrition but also for Energy and Environment - the 'FNEE Security' for a fruitful vision of 'Combating Climate Change (C³)'. The three workshops on Climate Change and ICRCGC during PAG 2017 will present some case studies and explore the missions for popularization of C₄ crops, reduction of greenhouse gas emission, augmentation of nutrient-use efficiency and breeding for genome plasticity through networking of the crop-wise, trait-wise and region-wise efforts and interactions among academia, funding agencies and policy makers.