Plants and animals do not evolve to serve as food and fiber and industrial feedstocks for man. Therefore their complement of genes need to be changed to fit them for agriculture, food and the many uses to which man puts them. This is done by plant breeding, that over the years has made major changes in the properties of plants by making and selecting new combinations of genes and variants of genes. In the next 20 to 30 years there will be another 1 million people to feed about every 4 days and most of these people will live in developing countries where the need for improved plants is already greatest. Thus, there is an urgent need to increase food production in a wide variety of environments, in many species, and in a variety of economic and social environments. This will require the discovery and deployment of many more genes and gene combinations.

Biotechnology, and genomics in particular, can make an enormous contribution to finding the genes and gene combinations necessary within species germplasm and, through the making of transgenic plants, by adding them to elite crop cultivars. Given the expected growth in genomics and the knowledge of the in vivo function of genes including promoters over the next few years, the prospects are excellent for providing new tools to assist plant improvement. There remain many substantial issues for the extent to which biotechnology will contribute to the world food situation. These include the extent to which technology will be transferred to those who are breeding the locally adapted germplasm, the granting of licenses from those who hold patents, the public perception of the technology, the results of benefit—risk evaluations and the financing of the plant improvement programs. The application of genomics to assist in meeting the world's food needs and the challenges therein will be discussed.