Seeding a Second Green Revolution

It will take a lot of rice, wheat and corn to feed 8.3 billion people—the estimated global population in 2030. Growing those crops won't be easy, either, because population growth and associated development are gradually reducing the world's arable land. And although 20th Century advances in agriculture have boosted crop yields, the gains may be reaching the point of diminishing returns.

Still, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) offers a cautiously hopeful outlook for the world's food supply. One reason for the FAO's optimism: human-friendly applications of agricultural biotechnology that can create enhanced crops capable of producing more food on less land while consuming less water.

Talking about a revolution

In the early 1960s, scientists from around the world collaborated on a suite of improved grain varieties and agricultural management techniques that became known as the Green Revolution. It stood on three pillars: plant breeding, irrigation and chemical fertilization (plus chemical herbicides and pesticides). From the 1970s through the 1990s—the peak years of the Green Revolution—world grain harvests more than doubled, a development that ranks as one of the 20th Century's greatest achievements.

However, in recent years the Green Revolution's seemingly routine gains in productivity have been slowing. Follow-on research has produced modest gains, perhaps indicating a ceiling on what can be achieved with irrigation, chemical fertilizers and conventional plant-breeding techniques.

Enhancing the plants

With optimum irrigation and fertilization, the remaining variable is the plants themselves. Researchers continue to try myriad combinations of plant characteristics, but the results are often unpredictable. For example, shorter plants can be grown closer together, but a too-short breed may get too little light to enable proper photosynthesis. As another example, plants bred for greater grain production may have stalks too thin to bear the heavier load.

Producing a substantial leap in yield will require new ways of enhancing plants, and biotechnology opens the door to new variations in plant characteristics. One possibility: altering the physical operation of photosynthesis within the plant. The key is changing the action of the stomata, which are pore-like openings that control the intake and outflow of oxygen, carbon dioxide and water through the skin of a plant. To enhance plant performance in dry-land areas, the stomata could be engineered to close more readily and thereby retain more water in the plant.

Supporting producers and consumers

Engineering such changes in plants requires new tools and Agilent is playing an active role. For example, Agilent has worked in cooperation with Paradigm Genetics to create research tools such as an Arabidopsis microarray kit, which features more than 14,880 plant gene sequences derived from public-domain databases. The specific gene sequences, contained on one industry-standard glass slide, enable genome-wide screening of Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism used to understand the gene function of plants.

Agilent has also announced that it will supply Orion Genomics with gene expression analysis technology to accelerate Orion's enhancement of plants important in human and animal health, food production and other commercial applications. The technology includes a suite of Agilent gene expression technologies such as Arabidopsis microarrays, the Agilent microarray scanner and the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer.

There's another side to Agilent's participation in this field. Many consumers outside the U.S. have concerns about agricultural biotechnology, especially the possible long-term effects on human health and the environment. In Europe, those concerns have been institutionalized with a European Union regulation that requires labeling of any food containing more than 5 percent genetically modified organisms (GMOs). One company performing the associated testing is Genolife, a biotechnology laboratory in France that specializes in molecular biology as it applies to agro-food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. Genolife relies on Agilent for products that enable it to perform GMO screening for clients who sell within the European market.

Today, the FAO and others look to biotechnology to help achieve a second revolution in food production, and biotech professionals look to Agilent for the tools they need to create the enhanced plants that can make it happen.

For more information

To learn more, please check out the Agilent Agricultural Biotechnology Web site. For additional information about these and other Agilent life sciences products and resources, please visit the main page of the Life Sciences/Chemical Analysis section of our Web site. To learn more about the FAO, please visit www.fao.org.