Ghost of Malthus walking again

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: Scientists across the globe are at work yet again, dealing with the Malthusian apprehensions of likely food shortages from rising population pressures on land. Thomas Robert Malthus, who expounded his theory in the 19 th century, is no more, but his warnings still ring prophetic. Around mid-20 th century, scientists had responded to the warnings by ushering in the Green Revolution that pushed yields. Today, the world, facing another food crisis, awaits another long-term solution to the problem.

The Green Revolution, though it made significant strides in increasing food production, was fraught with ill-effects. Excessive use of chemicals caused health and environmental hazards. Extensive tillage and use of chemical fertilisers caused a decline in soil health and factor productivity. Productivity has eventually plateaued.

Now, experts say solutions to the current problems lie in a combination of technologies that can ensure greater productivity along with sustainable and profitable agriculture.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation has called for increasing global rice production by 200 million tonne more by 2025. Scientists are working on developing new rice varieties and hybrids to meet the rising demand for this staple. At present, transgenic technology may not be the answer. The reason: none of the genetically modified crops so far has promised a higher yield; they are only resistant to pests and herbicides.

Experts say what is needed now is a major technological breakthrough that would increase yields of rice and wheat. It means increasing photosynthesis in rice and wheat to the level of maize, sorghum and sugarcane, which primarily means attracting more solar energy to increase productivity. Scientists say, however, that the process would take a decade or more.

Biotechnology tools like marker-aided selection, molecular characterisation, exploitation of apomatic genes, allele mining, harnessing heterosis, and pyramiding of rice genes can be deployed to produce crops of increased potential yield.

The good news is that the availability of rice genome structural sequence has given agriculture scientists the confidence to proceed in these areas. The International Rice Genome Sequencing Project has identified about 56,298 genes.

“After the structural genomics project, scientists are busy identifying gene functions. Once they are identified, it would be possible to develop better crops by introducing genes through traditional breeding in combination with marker-aided selections or through direct engineering of genes into rice varieties,” says a noted plant breeder and World Food Prize recipient, Gurudev Kush.