The world food and nutrition security has been and will still be a major concern in the Asia and the Pacific region. This issue is now exacerbated by the climate change and variability. Mutation breeding techniques have played a very significant role in combating these problems by developing new mutant germplasm and mutant varieties. Climate change will affect most of the RCA countries in a similar way and the social economic development have been and will be cause similar effect on crop production: less farmer land, demand on better food product. Therefore, a regional project will be very helpful.

The previous RCA projects have focused on enhancing crop genetic diversity, improving stress tolerance, and establishing a mutant germplasm network. The results have provided a very good foundation for integrated improvement of crops.

There is a need to make continuous efforts to induce and identify new sources of mutant genes and to develop new mutant varieties with higher yield potential, better quality, adaptation to climate change, to sustain and increase crop productivity.

New mutagenesis approaches such as ion beam irradiation and effective utilization of traditional mutagens will be focused to upgrade the mutagenesis efficiency. New opportunities of using high-throughput screening techniques are also available to increase the mutation screening and mutation breeding. 

This project is to enhance people's livelihood through the improvement of crop productivity and food security through the application mutation technique and other nuclear and isotopic techniques under the driver of climate change and variability.