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Published online 10 December 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1294
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Soya genome sequenced
Biofuel potential spurs US consortium to map DNA of nutritious bean.
The soya bean has been sequenced at last. Glycine max is an important human and animal food crop, rich in oil and protein.
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Current biodiesel yields: Corn, 70 liters/acre, soybean, 180 liters/acre, opium poppy, 470 liters/acre, oil palm, 2400 liters/acre. Biodiesel yields increase 2220 liters/acre by *not* planting soybean. What does genetic engineering promise, and when, and for how much money? Enviro-whinerism sells carbon credits as Medieval indulgences.
Oil palm can't be grown in very many places; thus the interest in less efficient crops like soy. My favorite is algae, which doesn't even compete for arable land. But biodiesel is NOT sustainable. It IS renewable and can be made locally, so it may ease geopolitical tensions for a while; but it increases global warming no matter what you make it from. Wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal do not.
We need to think several moves ahead! As the global population doubles and redoubles, we will run short of food, AND clean water, AND energy. The ONLY long-term solution is to stop increasing the population.
"The ONLY long-term solution is to stop increasing the population." I agree with that statement, Max. If we want to continue to improve our lives for generations to come, and we want to do that while preserving at least some part of the natural world as we know it, the only way is to stop breeding like rats. There are more than six billion of us, that's more than enough. We won't go extinct because there are too few of us. We should find a way to fight the drive to reproduce and multiply and to slow it down to reasonable trickle that will lead to a sustainable and reduced population.
Using food crops into other realm of purpose such us biodiesel would instigates problem because competition of usage would be possible. Food is more important than diesel.I just hope that the production of soybean as potential biodiesel would not compromise its production for foodstuff.