The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man by Michael Tennesen Page B
Authors: Michael Tennesen
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be mostly seed, with a short, thick stock and little else.A light wind rippled through the rows in front of us, looking like ocean waves of wheat grain. The use of these new grains started shortly after World War II and spread like wildfire over much of the planet. Says Poulton, “Rothamsted switched over to these shorter, thick wheat plants about the same time the rest of the world did.”
Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for creating the first green revolution. A forester and plant pathologist, he walked away from a job at DuPont, a chemical company, in 1944 to join the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican hunger project. His first post was as a genetics expert, but by the time he received his Nobel Prize in 1970, he was the director of the Wheat Improvement Program in Mexico.
Wheat was in poor shape in that country, the victim of a plague of maladies, including rust. Borlaug crossed Mexican wheat with rust-resistant varieties from elsewhere and obtained rust-resistance in wheat that grew well in the Mexican environment. Then he bred this wheat in the Sonoran Desert in winter and the Mexican central highlands in summer and developed breeds capable of growing in different climates.
Farmers in that country adopted the new varieties and wheat output began to climb. By the late 1940s, researchers knew they could induce higher grain yields with extra nitrogen, but the seed heads containing the wheat grains grew so heavy that the plants would topple, ruining the crop. So Borlaug worked at crossing wheat with strains that had shorter, thicker, more compact stocks. These plants could produce enormous heads of grain, yet their stiff, short bodies could support the weight without toppling. This transformation tripled and quadrupled production.
When researchers from India applied this idea to rice, the staple crop for nearly half the world, yields jumped several-fold compared with traditional varieties. Chinese agriculturalists started using semidwarf varieties to feed their people, a decision that aided China’srise to industrial power.
Now scientists tell us we need another green revolution if we are to meet the food demands of the next several decades. Our friends at Rothamsted are trying to participate in this, but it’s not easy. Their current professed goal is to get twenty metric tons of wheat per hectare in twenty years, the so-called20:20 Wheat. But Poulton says, “The average wheat grain yield for the UK is currently about 8.0 metric tons per hectare, but on the best soils with good management and favorable weather a farmer could hope to get 12 metric tons per hectare.”
It seems the next jumps in crop production will come not from big discoveries like compact wheat but from a series of smaller changes that agronomists hope will add up to larger production. Rothamsted is currently looking at genetic improvements to increase the amount of grain; advanced pest and disease controls to protect plant yields; improved understanding of soil and root interactions to improve water and nutrient uptake; and a number of plant and environmental interactions to mitigate climate change.
Agricultural scientists at the institute are keeping an eye on what others across the Atlantic are doing as well.Jonathan Lynch, professor of plant nutrition at Penn State University, thinks that developing more aggressive root systems might be the answer to increased fertilizer efficiency and water usage. Crossing US beans with several varieties of ancestral stocks found in the high Andes Mountains, he’s working to obtain belowground plant systems with lateral root reach sufficient to search for phosphorus in the topsoil and deeper taproots to go after receding groundwater and rapidly draining nitrogen.
Susan McCouch, professor of plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University, focuses on acid soils, a problem on 30 percent of the earth’s surface. Acid releases aluminum into the ground, which
Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for creating the first green revolution. A forester and plant pathologist, he walked away from a job at DuPont, a chemical company, in 1944 to join the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican hunger project. His first post was as a genetics expert, but by the time he received his Nobel Prize in 1970, he was the director of the Wheat Improvement Program in Mexico.
Wheat was in poor shape in that country, the victim of a plague of maladies, including rust. Borlaug crossed Mexican wheat with rust-resistant varieties from elsewhere and obtained rust-resistance in wheat that grew well in the Mexican environment. Then he bred this wheat in the Sonoran Desert in winter and the Mexican central highlands in summer and developed breeds capable of growing in different climates.
Farmers in that country adopted the new varieties and wheat output began to climb. By the late 1940s, researchers knew they could induce higher grain yields with extra nitrogen, but the seed heads containing the wheat grains grew so heavy that the plants would topple, ruining the crop. So Borlaug worked at crossing wheat with strains that had shorter, thicker, more compact stocks. These plants could produce enormous heads of grain, yet their stiff, short bodies could support the weight without toppling. This transformation tripled and quadrupled production.
When researchers from India applied this idea to rice, the staple crop for nearly half the world, yields jumped several-fold compared with traditional varieties. Chinese agriculturalists started using semidwarf varieties to feed their people, a decision that aided China’srise to industrial power.
Now scientists tell us we need another green revolution if we are to meet the food demands of the next several decades. Our friends at Rothamsted are trying to participate in this, but it’s not easy. Their current professed goal is to get twenty metric tons of wheat per hectare in twenty years, the so-called20:20 Wheat. But Poulton says, “The average wheat grain yield for the UK is currently about 8.0 metric tons per hectare, but on the best soils with good management and favorable weather a farmer could hope to get 12 metric tons per hectare.”
It seems the next jumps in crop production will come not from big discoveries like compact wheat but from a series of smaller changes that agronomists hope will add up to larger production. Rothamsted is currently looking at genetic improvements to increase the amount of grain; advanced pest and disease controls to protect plant yields; improved understanding of soil and root interactions to improve water and nutrient uptake; and a number of plant and environmental interactions to mitigate climate change.
Agricultural scientists at the institute are keeping an eye on what others across the Atlantic are doing as well.Jonathan Lynch, professor of plant nutrition at Penn State University, thinks that developing more aggressive root systems might be the answer to increased fertilizer efficiency and water usage. Crossing US beans with several varieties of ancestral stocks found in the high Andes Mountains, he’s working to obtain belowground plant systems with lateral root reach sufficient to search for phosphorus in the topsoil and deeper taproots to go after receding groundwater and rapidly draining nitrogen.
Susan McCouch, professor of plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University, focuses on acid soils, a problem on 30 percent of the earth’s surface. Acid releases aluminum into the ground, which
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