What is agrobiodiversity?
Thesaurus of Sustainability
This post is also available in:
This post is also available in:
Ελληνικά (Greek) 
Indonesia (Indonesian)
Agrobiodiversity is a branch of biodiversity that refers to the variety of cultivating plants, livestock animals, and microorganisms, which are used directly or not for food and non-food production. Agrobiodiversity is divided into three levels.
- Genetic biodiversity includes all the cultivated varieties and animal breeds as long as the wild relatives of a single species. Farmers growing a wide range of varieties promote agrobiodiversity. Old varieties and wild relatives are the gene pool for new varieties, hybrids, and cross-hybrid species development.
- Specific agrobiodiversity refers to numerous plant and animal species being used for food consumption. The globalization of nutrition and monocropping leads to the cultivation of a narrow range of species, reducing agrobiodiversity and nutrition quality.
- Agroecosystem diversity represents the variety and complexity of crops, livestock animals, weeds, wildlife, technical forests, tree fences, etc. in a specific region.
