Enhancing the crops to feed the poor

Abstract

Solutions to the problem of how the developing world will meet its future food needs are broader than producing more food, although the successes of the 'Green Revolution' demonstrate the importance of technology in generating the growth in food output in the past. Despite these successes, the world still faces continuing vulnerability to food shortages. Given the necessary funding, it seems likely that conventional crop breeding, as well as emerging technologies based on molecular biology, genetic engineering and natural resource management, will continue to improve productivity in the coming decades.

Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields

“…The doubling of agricultural production in the past 40 y has been fueled by technological improvements as well as higher levels of pesticide and fertilizer inputs (2). Although this increase in food production has contributed to vast improvements in nutrition and reductions in hunger worldwide (2,3), the ecological and environmental consequences of these inputs are straining the long-term viability of agricultural systems (1) and the human and natural communities that surround agricultural production (4,5).…”

Flexible control of plant architecture and yield via switchable expression of Arabidopsis gai

“…This reduced pannicle extrusion might be expected to reduce yield and to counteract any yield benefits resulting from shortening of the stem internodes. It is likely that the use of widely, respect to the development of sustainable agricultural systems that will meet the predicted doubling in world food demand over the next 50 years (Huang et al, 2002;Tilman et al, 2002). Increasing crop yields remains a key objective in this regard, and here we have described a system for switchable dwarfism that can be introduced into a wide variety of transformable crop plant species.…”

“…Increasing crop yields remains a key objective in this regard, and here we have described a system for switchable dwarfism that can be introduced into a wide variety of transformable crop plant species. Crop physiologists are increasingly recognizing that, although the semidwarf varieties of the green revolution were an improvement on previous varieties, further improvements could be made (Huang et al, 2002). The mutant alleles that the green revolution varieties contain have some undesirable effects on plant phenotype that are not easily modulated.…”

Tropical forests and adaptation to climate change: in search of synergies

“…But, the shortfall in domestic cereal production in the developing world is expected to widen from around than 100 million tons in 1997 to around 190 million tons in the year 2020 (Rosegrant et al, 2001). In many regions of the world, there will be a limited ability for new varieties and increased fertilizer use to further increase yields (Huang et al, 2002). On top of this, degradation of soil and water resources has reached alarming proportions (Vasil, 1998;Smaling et al, 1997) and will undermine future efforts to boost agricultural productivity.…”