Sustainable Food Production

Climate change is exacerbating challenges both for global food production and from its environmental impacts. Sustainable and socially responsible solutions for future world-wide food security are urgently needed.

The rapid expansion and globalization of the seaweed production industry, combined with rising seawater temperatures and coastal eutrophication, has led to an increase in infectious diseases and pest outbreaks. Here, we propose a novel Progressive Management Pathway for improving Seaweed Biosecurity.

By the end of this century, a 50% increase in agricultural productivity is required to feed the world. Recent studies have demonstrated de novo domestication of wild plants as a new crop breeding strategy to meet future food challenges.

Marine aquaculture is widely proposed as compatible with ocean sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and human nutrition goals. In this Perspective, Belton and colleagues dispute the empirical validity of such claims and contend that the potential of marine aquaculture has been much exaggerated.

Animal pollination may not only contribute to crop yields, but also to food quality. This meta-analysis based on 190 studies shows that animal pollination improves food quality, both in terms of organoleptic properties and, to a lesser extent, nutritional values.

Responses of agriculture and fisheries to climate change are interlinked, yet rarely studied together. Here, the authors analyse more than 3000 households from 5 tropical countries and forecast mid-century climate change impacts, finding that communities with higher fishery dependence and lower socioeconomic status communities face greater losses.

Agricultural sectors receive US$600 billion per year in government support, providing incentives for GHG emission-intensive production. Here, the authors show that removing this support will not reduce global GHG emissions by much; rather it will need to be radically redirected to contribute to climate change mitigation.

Wheat yield is sensitive to temperature, but there could be substantial variation in this response across cultivars. Here the authors present data on the climatic responses of wheat cultivars in South Africa, highlighting which cultivars might be better able to maintain yield under warming.

Increasing rice yield while improving resource use efficiency is of great importance. This study examines cropping systems globally to highlight areas where rice production can be improved by prioritizing R&D strategies.

Phenomic and genomic approaches are required to evaluate the progress of breeding strategies. Here, the authors analyse 65 years of genetic progress in maize, showing that breeders have selected traits with stable effects on yield whereas not for adaptive traits key for climate change adaptation.

Resolving ecological-economic trade-offs is a challenge in agriculture. Here, Wurz et al. find that in Malagasy vanilla agroforests, vanilla yield is generally not related to tree, herbaceous plant, bird, amphibian, reptile and ant biodiversity, creating opportunities for conservation outside protected areas.

Springmann and Freund use an integrated modelling framework to show that coupling agricultural subsidies to producing foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics can improve population health and lower greenhouse gas emissions without reducing economic welfare.

Extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency and severity, threatening the capacity for crops and farmers alike to adapt. Here Sloat and colleagues track the movement of cereal crops over the past 40 years, finding a global migration away from warming climates.

'Crop growing periods and cultivars are key to crop adaptation. Here, the authors use a modelling approach that integrates farmers decision and biophysical crop models, showing the importance of cultivar, sowing date and growing period adaptation.'

Crop rotations including legumes have been proposed as a strategy to enhance food production. Here, the authors conduct a global meta-analysis on legume-based crop rotations, showing that legume pre-crops increase 20% of yield in average across various crops and climatic regions.

Switching and relocating crops could be a key pathway for agricultural adaptation to climate change. Here, Rising and Devineni use data-driven Bayesian modelling to estimate the potential for crop switching to mitigate climate impacts on US crop production under a high-emission scenario, showing considerable opportunities but also limitations.

Global demand for “blue food” is growing. In this quantitative synthesis, the authors analyse global seafood demand and project trends to 2050, finding considerable regional variation in the relationship between wealth and consumption.

Crop diversification could be important for food security. Here, using methods from network science, the authors find that a positive relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability globally does not necessarily equate to improving nutritional stability in a given country.

Wheat breeding programmes improve yield by enhancing biotic and abiotic stress resistance. This study reveals that high temperature extremes adversely affect the productivity of new elite wheat breeding lines, and that future yield gains may be outpaced by the rapid advance of climate change.

European Union’s vulnerability to climate change stretches far beyond its borders. Here the authors find that more than 44% of the EU agricultural imports will become highly vulnerable to drought in future because of climate change.

Understanding emissions flow with trade matters for climate action. Trade-adjusted emission accounting would close the carbon loophole generated by trade for more effective climate action targeted at producers, consumers, and intermediary traders

The choice of food intake is at least partially influenced by genetics, even though the effect sizes appear rather modest. Here, Cole et al. perform GWAS for food intake (85 individual food items and 85 derived dietary patterns) and test potential causal relationships with cardiometabolic traits using Mendelian randomization.

Mammalian cell-based cultured meat has mostly been unstructured, leaving a demand for artificial steak-like meat. Here the authors present an assembled steak-like tissue of bovine skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and blood capillary tissue fabricated by tendon-gel integrated printing technology.

Plant genotype alone appears to be insufficient to explain trait variations. This study integrates GWAS, MWAS and mGWAS in 827 foxtail millet cultivars, revealing that root-associated microbiota affect plant phenotypes in a host genotype-dependent manner.

Genetic basis of the drought tolerance of upland rice is unclear. Here, the authors report the cloning of a COBRA-like protein encoding gene DROT1 and reveal that it is repressed by ERF3 and activated by ERF71 to help control the balance between growth and drought tolerance in upland rice.

Increasing studies have suggested that single reference genome is insufficient to capture all variations in the genome. Here, the authors report a graph-based cucumber pan-genome by analyzing 12 chromosome-scale assemblies and reveal variations associated with agronomic traits and domestication.

Rhizosphere microbiota can influence plant pathogen interactions. Here the authors use field- and lab-based approaches to show that rhizosphere bacteria and fungi of healthy tomatoes can enhance tomato resistance against Fusarium wilt disease and formulate synthetic microbial communities that could help to control soil-borne disease.

While greater yam provides food and income security for millions of people around the world, there are limited genomic resources available. Here, the authors report a chromosome-scale assembly of the greater yam genome as well as quantitative trait loci associated with anthracnose resistance and tuber traits.

Most crops are farmed under high transpiring environments, but our understanding of transpiration-dependent salt tolerance (TDST) remains limited. Here, the authors report a dirigent family protein is responsible for TDST by affecting lignin deposition at Casparian strip barrier and transportation of Na⁺ across the endodermis.

The Aegilops tauschii-derived leaf rust resistance gene Lr42 has been widely used for breeding resistance wheat cultivars, but the molecular basis is unknown. Here, the authors show that Lr42 encodes an NLR-type of disease resistance gene by bulked segregant mapping in Ae. tauschii and confirm its function in common wheat.

Improving phosphorus (P) acquisition efficiency is important for sustainable agriculture. Here, the authors report a natural variation in an upstream open reading frame of a SEC12-like gene GmPHF1 is crucial for protein abundance and spatial distribution of GmPHF1, which contribute to P acquisition diversity in soybean.

Biofortification is an effective means to reduce micronutrient malnutrition. Here, the authors review recent advances in biofortification and propose stacking multiple micronutrient traits into high-yielding varieties through the combination of conventional breeding and genetic engineering approaches.

In soybean production, level of seed protein frequently shows a negative correlation with seed oil content and yield. Here, the authors report a CCT gene pleiotropically regulates these traits and the selection of larger seeds determining allele leads to higher oil content but lower protein content in soybean cultivars.

Diet affects the human gut microbiome, but studies linking crop genetics to seed traits that influence the human gut microbiome are lacking. Here, the authors develop an in vitro microbiome screening method and reveal the association between sorghum genes regulating condensed tannin biosynthesis and human gut microbiome.

Rice bean is an underexploited legume crop that has many desirable properties against bio and abiotic stresses. Here, the authors report the genome assembly of this species, conduct population genetics studies and reveal the genetic variations associated with adaptation and yield traits.