Modern science can exploit the qualities of these marginal crops and deploy it in varieties that will be more widely grown. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) has one of the world’s largest gene banks in the world for dryland crops. Excessive rainfall could wash away soils from the land to complement the impacts of degradation of the natural resource base due to agro-chemicals, overcultivation of soils, deforestation, slash-and-burn agriculture and deterioration of water sources.