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Sweeping changes in agriculture needed as world warms and grows | A group of prestigious scientists has warned that the looming threats of global climate change and population
growth call for sweeping changes in agriculture. The research team, led by Nina
Federoff, science and technology adviser to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
suggests that there is a "critical need to get beyond popular biases against the
use of agricultural biotechnology," as well as explore the potential of aquaculture
and maximize agricultural production in dry and saline areas. The researchers
note that the impacts of climate change on agriculture and human health are already
apparent. They point to the 2003 heat wave in Europe, which caused just a 3.5-degree
rise in the average summer temperature, but killed 30,000 to 50,000 people. Gaining
much less attention was the resulting 20 percent to 36 percent decrease in the
yields of grains and fruit that summer. "That dramatic drop in yield is just a
foreshadowing of the challenges that lie ahead for agriculture during the 21st
century, as temperatures rise and another 3 billion people are added to the global
population," said UC Davis plant pathologist Pamela Ronald. Ronald and her laboratory
are working on developing a new generation of crops that can better resist diseases
and tolerate environmental stresses, including flooding. "Global warming will
alter the pattern of diseases among crops and also cause intense, periodic flooding,"
Ronald said. "The good news is that we have the ability, through conventional
breeding and genetic engineering, to generate new varieties of our existing food
crops that can better adapt to these environmental changes," she said. She noted,
for example, that her research collaborators recently released a new rice variety
for Bangladesh and India that can better withstand flooding, an environmental
stress that reduces yearly yields by 4 million tons - enough to feed 30 million
people in these two countries. The researchers also suggest that future food,
feed and fiber crops would ideally be capable of making better use of nitrogen
from the environment, to minimize water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
associated with chemical fertilizers. |
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