Evolution not revolution of farming systemswill best feed and green the world

The challenge to properly feed a world population of 9.2 billion by 2050, that must be achieved on essentially currently cropped area, requires that food production be increased by 70%. This large increase can only be achieved by combinations of greater crop yields and more intensive cropping adapted to local conditions and availability of inputs. Farming systems are dynamic and continuously adapt to changing ecological, environmental and social conditions, while achieving greater production and resource-use efficiency by application of science and technology. This article argues that the solution to feed and green the world in 2050 is to support this evolution more strongly by providing farmers with necessary information, inputs, and recognition. There is no revolutionary alternative. Proposals to transform agriculture to low-input and organic systems would, because of low productiv- ity, exacerbate the challenge if applied in small part, and ensure failure if applied more widely. The challenge is, however, great. Irrigation, necessary to increase cropping intensity in many areas cannot be extended much more widely than at present, and it is uncertain if the current rate of crop yield increase can be maintained. Society needs greater recognition of the food-supply problem and must increase funding and support for agricultural research while it attends to issues of food waste and over consumption that can make valuable reductions to food demand from agriculture

One Hundred Years of Grain Omics: Identifying the Glutens That Feed the World.

Glutens, the storage proteins in wheat grains, are a major source of protein in human nutrition. The protein composition of wheat has therefore been an important focus of cereal research. Proteomic tools have been used to describe the genetic diversity of wheat germplasms from different origins at the level of polymorphisms in alleles encoding glutenin and gliadin, the two main proteins of gluten. More recently, proteomics has been used to understand the impact of specific gluten proteins on wheat quality. Here we review the impact of proteomics on the study of gluten proteins as it has evolved from fractionation and electrophoretic techniques to advanced mass spectrometry. In the postgenome era, proteomics is proving to be essential in the effort to identify and understand the interactions between different gluten proteins. This is helping to fill in gaps in our knowledge of how the technological quality of wheat is determined by the interaction between genotype and environment. We also collate information on the various storage protein alleles identified and their prevalence, which makes it possible to infer the effects of wheat selection on grain protein content. We conclude by reviewing the more recent use of transgenesis aimed at improving the quality of gluten.

Malaria’s Eve: Evidence of a recent population bottleneck throughout the world populations of Plasmodium falciparum

We have analyzed DNA sequences from world-wide geographic strains of Plasmodium falciparum and found a complete absence of synonymous DNA polymorphism at 10 gene loci. We hypothesize that all extant world populations of the parasite have recently derived (within several thousand years) from a single ancestral strain. The upper limit of the 95% confidence interval for the time when this most recent common ancestor lived is between 24,500 and 57,500 years ago (depending on different estimates of the nucleotide substitution rate); the actual time is likely to be much more recent. The recent origin of the P. falciparum populations could have resulted from either a demographic sweep (P. falciparum has only recently spread throughout the world from a small geographically confined population) or a selective sweep (one strain favored by natural selection has recently replaced all others). The selective sweep hypothesis requires that populations of P. falciparum be effectively clonal, despite the obligate sexual stage of the parasite life cycle. A demographic sweep that started several thousand years ago is consistent with worldwide climatic changes ensuing the last glaciation, increased anthropophilia of the mosquito vectors, and the spread of agriculture. P. falciparum may have rapidly spread from its African tropical origins to the tropical and subtropical regions of the world only within the last 6,000 years. The recent origin of the world-wide P. falciparum populations may account for its virulence, as the most malignant of human malarial parasites.