New York (PTI): Plant mutation, a scientific technique that considerably improves crop productivity, could provide an answer to the current global food and energy crisis, a UN expert said.

"At a time when the world is facing a food and energy crisis of unprecedented proportions, plant mutation breeding can be a catalyst in developing improved, higher-yield, saline-resistant, sturdier crop varieties," Werner Burkart, Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a four-day conference beginning August 12.

The International Symposium on Induced Mutations in Plants, hosted by IAEA, brings together over 600 scientists, researchers and plant breeders from around the world to discuss the latest innovations and how they can improve crop varieties in the future.

Plant mutation, an 80 year-old method, with mutagens such as X-rays, gamma radiation and chemicals is used to produce plant varieties that are disease-resistant or best suited to conditions such as high altitude or saline soil.

One success story is mutant barley varieties that thrive at altitudes of up to 5,000 meters in the highlands of Peru and which led to a 52 per cent increase in yields between 1978 and 2002.

Burkart, who is Head of the Agencys Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, said 2008 will be remembered as the year in which the world understood the realities of climate change and the food and energy crisis.

"These big issues are intimately interlinked, and translate in the agronomy field into a competition between food, feed and fuel for soil, water, human and financial resources," he noted.