US: Building a bridge from basic botany to applied agriculture
One of the planet's leading questions is how to produce enough food to feed the world in an increasingly variable climate. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that food production must rise 70% over the next 40 years to feed a growing global population, and plants are one major component of the necessary rise in food production. Plants—grains, cereals, fruits, vegetables, and more—feed humans directly and indirectly by supporting livestock. Current research must tap into our knowledge of how plants work to develop more efficient and higher yielding agricultural systems that produce more food using fewer resources and with reduced environmental impacts.
The solutions to feeding the world are certainly multi-faceted, requiring knowledge from a diversity of fields and practices to successfully raise food production and maintain ecosystem security. Thus, three prominent scientists are highlighting the importance of basic plant science and its relevance for pressing global issues like applied agriculture. A special issue of the American Journal of Botany—co-edited by Allison Miller, Associate Professor of Biology at Saint Louis University; Elizabeth Kellogg, Member and Principal Investigator at the Danforth Plant Science Center and former president of the Botanical Society of America; and Briana Gross, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth—emphasizes how a broad range of basic plant science is relevant to global food demands.
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