1
Plants don’t necessarily operate at their full potential. Let’s make them, says Peter Horton.
To provide more crop yield on less land with fewer inputs undoubtedly requires alteration to the fundamental physiological attributes of plants. Included in these is the increase in efficiency of photosynthesis, recently identified by BBRSC as a focus of special interest and subject of a previous post on this blog.
The relationship between photosynthesis and crop yield is controversial.
Continue reading Enhancing photosynthesis
Iain Gordon reflects on a unique opportunity for Scottish science and enterprise as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
On 1 April 2011 Scotland became home to a brand new scientific research centre. The James Hutton Institute aims to be one of the world’s leading research institutes on land, crops, water and the environment and is the biggest, multi-disciplinary centre of its type in the UK.
Fittingly, its name has been taken from one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, James Hutton (1726-97).
Continue reading A new institute to tackle food security challenges
We are too reliant on too few crop species. Using more underutilised plants will improve global food security, says Sean Mayes.
The world depends for its basic diet of carbohydrates, fats and proteins on a very limited number of crop species.
For carbohydrates, three related species, wheat, rice and maize, dominate human consumption. Any short term improvement in food security will need to include modification (either transgenic or through conventional breeding) of these and other staple crops.
Continue reading Breaking the dependency
Social science has an active role to play in driving positive consumer choices, says Philip Lowe.
Governments, including the UK’s, have signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and brought in domestic legislation with ambitious carbon reduction targets. But before we sit back and congratulate ourselves, shouldn’t we be thinking about exactly how we are to achieve real carbon reduction?
At the moment we are not only in danger of simply exporting our responsibilities by trading our emissions with less industrialised countries, but also failing to address the overall contribution that agriculture makes to climate change – at present the industry is responsible for 38 per cent of UK methane emissions – the vast majority from livestock management.
Continue reading Kind words butter no parsnips
A paper that details the scope of the food security challenge provides useful insights, says Janet Allen.
An interesting and potentially very useful contribution to the thinking and discussion around food security has appeared in the form of an open access paper The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture.
It is too easy to be sceptical and say what we need are 100 answers, but if you start with good questions you are more likely to generate good answers. The questions in this paper were produced by a wide consultation process involving 45 institutions and finally 55 authors based in 21 countries.
Continue reading 100 questions for global agriculture
Improving the conversion of light into biomass will require thinking outside the box, says Riaz Bhunnoo.
It’s said that you can’t force people to have fun, but can you help a group of people to be creative?
The answer is yes. But it depends largely on the people present and the environment they are in.
The Ideas Lab on enhancing photosynthesis, jointly organised by BBSRC and the National Science Foundation in the US, and held at the Asilomar Conference Center, California, Sept 13-17 aimed to create an environment conducive to creative, ‘out of the box’ thinking. The idea was to bring together a diverse group of people from different disciplinary backgrounds and to use their unique perspectives and expertise to generate novel and potentially ground-breaking ideas in a similar format to a ‘sandpit’.
Continue reading The Ideas Lab on enhancing photosynthesis
Better data on how and where aid is spent is needed to make real progress on tackling hunger, argue Gordon Conway and Laura Kelly.
Holding global leaders to account has never been easy. But when they come together in the Muskoka region of Canada 25-26 June, G8 leaders claim they will report on their own progress on tackling global hunger.
Continue reading From pledges to progress: measuring agricultural development assistance
The needs of food security require that food production be increased on a relatively fixed amount of land but in a sustainable way. How can this objective be achieved?
In particular how can we protect plants against pests and diseases in a sustainable way? Many consumer and environmentalists would like
Continue reading ‘Green’ pesticides and a greener revolution
Through our understanding of how plants secure their own nutritional requirements, we can provide new solutions for sustainable food production for the world’s growing population.
Plants must secure high levels of nitrogen, and in conventional agriculture nitrogen is added at high concentrations in the form of inorganic fertilisers. Artificial nitrogenous fertilisers can increase yield by as much as 50% and the global farming system, and hence our own food supply, is now dependent on them. We would face very severe food shortages if nitrogen fertilisers were to become unavailable.
Continue reading Getting to the root of food security
Livestock species are an important part of the human food chain but their health and our agricultural productivity is challenged constantly by infectious diseases. The livestock sector in the UK is worth around £8Bn per annum and the overall costs of animal diseases during the past 15 years are an estimated £15Bn. These costs come from production losses, the eradication of pathogens whose arrival leads to restrictions in livestock trade, and the implementation of strategies to prevent potentially high rates of mortality.
Continue reading Infectious diseases: old enemies and new threats
