Biotechnological Contributions to Food Secrurity with Cassava and Rice.

Abstract

Present world food production would provide ca. 2,400 kcal/day/person if it could be equally distributed amongst the world population. Food is, however, and will always be, unevenly distributed. Many of us are used to consume 3,400 kcal/day. However, 800 million are starving at 1,800 kcal/day, and 3.4 billion live at the minimal level of 2,200 kcal/day. Although food security to date may be mainly a poverty problem, it is increasingly becoming a production problem. The world population is growing by 90 million p.a. and will, probably, stabilise only when a total of 10-12 billion has been reached. At the same time, however, world-wide food production per capita is declining, as is the crop land and the water available for agricultural food production. The continuous increases in food productivity of the past decades are declining and two of the three major food systems-oceans and rangelands-are already exploited at their limits. The world population will continue to grow dramatically and most of this population growth will occur in Developing Countries, which will not be rich enough to compete on the world market for food surplus and which, therefore, will, have to increase their harvests from agricultural land dramatically. And this increase has to be achieved under sustained conditions, with reduced inputs in agrochemicals, energy, water and manpower. Yield per acre has at least to be doubled. The most direct approach to an increase in food production, without an additional increase in input of resources, would be via reduction of losses with the help of resistant crop varieties. As crop loss is still in the range of 50% for the major food security crops such as rice and cassava, the potential of such an approach is enormous. Genetic engineering could, therefore, substantially contribute to the rescue of lost harvests via production of resistant varieties. It also could contribute to a second facet of food security, the improvement of food quality with regard to vitamins, micronutrients and essential amino acids. From our work at the ETH Zurich we will present the state of the art of projects with the food-security crops rice and cassava on pest-and disease resistance, supply of provitamin A, iron and protein, and reduction of toxic compounds.

Is it feasible to establish a connection between cassava and rice in terms of their image?

“…Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Australia, northern and southwest Chinese regions, and southern Vietnam love sticky low-amylose rice. By choosing high-amylose rice, Indonesia produces hard rice (Darmawan, 2017;Darmayanti, 2023;Puonti-Kaerlas et al, 1999). Along with amylose, amylopectin impacts rice texture (Bandumula, 2018).…”

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“…Johannes Fütterer achieved great competence in plant virus research (10,12,(24)(25)(26)39). Johanna Puonti-Kaerlas did pioneering work on cassava biotechnology but left ETH Zurich before she could harvest the fruits of ten years of investment in technology development (43,44,80,98,99,110,111).…”

Novel Bioengineered Cassava Expressing an Archaeal Starch Degradation System and a Bacterial ADP-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase for Starch Self-Digestibility and Yield Increase

“…Improvement of cassava through traditional breeding has been challenging due to high heterozygosity, low natural fertility, erratic flowering and the lack of agronomically important genes in sexually compatible germplasm ( Puonti-Kaerlas et al, 1999 ; Ihemere et al, 2006 ; Que et al, 2010 ; Ceballos et al, 2015 ; Chavarriaga-Aguirre et al, 2016 ). Therefore, genetic engineering is a preferred approach for trait improvement.…”