Heribert Hirt
Title: “PlantACT! – Challenges and Opportunities of Agriculture to Mitigate Climate Change”
Abstract: We are on a trajectory of reaching an increase in temperature of 3.5 o Celsius at the end of this century. This scenario will have catastrophic consequences as each degree Celsius corresponds to a reduction of roughly 10 % in crop yield, meaning that we would lose a third of food and feed production by 2100. As agriculture contributes 25 – 30 % to greenhouse gas emissions but at the same time also suffers from climate change, solutions based on solid scientific thinking are necessary and essential. However, a global strategy how to react and move forward to meet this challenge is missing. Therefore, members of the scientific community joined to create PlantACT! (Plants for Action). The PlantACT! initiative aims to develop realistic solutions and recommendations. PlantACT! developed and publish a strategy plan addressing the main targets and priorities: 1. How to reduce GHG emission strategies; 2. How to enhance crop stress resilience and 3. How to enhance carbon sequestration by agriculture. Immediate solutions of the action plan will be highlighted as well as the way forward for transforming agriculture from a main contributor to a key mitigator of climate change.
Bio: Hirt studied biochemistry at the Univ. of Cape Town and Vienna where he received his PhD in After post-doctoral fellowships at the Univ. of Oxford and Wageningen, he became Professor of Genetics at the Univ. of Vienna and Vice-Director of the Gregor Mendel Institeu of Plant Molecular Biology. In 2007, he was nominated Director of the INRAe Plant Genomics Institute inParis and of the Center for Desert Agriculture at KAUST in 2014. Since 2022, he is also speaker of
the PlantACT! initiative, a global think tank, that tries to develop plant-based solutions to climate change (https://www.plant-act.org/). Hirt has a long standing record on how plants can survive under abiotic or biotic stress conditions (h-index 101). His current research is focused on the symbiosis of plants, microbes and soils in deserts and how knowledge of these factors can contribute to make crop plants resilient to abiotic or biotic stress conditions (https://www.heribert-hirt.org/). His work also aims to provide sustainable solutions to reestablish forestation and sustainable carbon sequestration in arid regions of the world.
Affiliation: University of Vienna, KAUST, Austria.
