Comment in 2015

Agriculture is often viewed as a source of problems needing innovative solutions. But agriculture can actually be a source of innovations for the bioeconomy, if researchers embrace the cultural changes needed.

Plant science has an important part to play in meeting the global food security challenge. But, advances will be most effective if better coupled with agronomic science and the broader food security agenda.

In October 1865, Julius Sachs published a monograph entitled Experimental Physiology of Plants, and so initiated a new, quantitative branch of basic and applied botany. In our current post-genomic era the legacy of Sachs is re-emerging as a key discipline of the botanical sciences.

The tremendous gains in crop yields seen over the twentieth century were underpinned by fertilizer use and manipulation of the aboveground parts of the plant. To meet the food demands of the twenty-first century, plant scientists must turn their attention belowground.

Raising the water productivity of crops, such that they yield more with less water, is one route to raising food production over the coming century. To achieve this goal, breeders must look beyond the conservative strategies that plants employ to cope with drought in the wild.

The newly launched Diversity Seek initiative emphasizes the importance of state-of-the-art phenotypic and genotypic information. But to achieve its aims, it will also need to encourage the management of historical data, such as the metadata on the germplasm collections themselves.

Consistent with their historical focus on the functional utility of plants, botanical gardens have an important opportunity to help ensure global food and ecosystem security by expanding their living collections, research and education programmes to emphasize agriculture and its impacts.

Arabidopsis has provided significant insights into the molecular workings of plants. Agriculturally aligned model grasses can be used to bridge the gap between this basic understanding of plant biology and real world challenges.

Increasing the yields of crops requires the investigation, and subsequent exploitation, of the genetic diversity preserved beyond the narrow range of commonly cultivated varieties. Such an undertaking requires a partnership of academia and industry.

Buried in a notebook from his undergraduate days lie Newton's musings on the movement of sap in trees. Viewed in conjunction with our modern understanding of plant hydrodynamics, his speculations seem prescient.

Africa south of the Sahara is going through a major agricultural transformation. Low crop productivity, hunger and pessimism are being replaced by a rapid rise in food production, an increasingly vibrant agricultural value chain and convergence towards a common goal.

Genome editing opens up opportunities for the precise and rapid alteration of crops to boost yields, protect against pests and diseases and enhance nutrient content. The extent to which applied plant research and crop breeding benefit will depend on how the EU decides to regulate this fledgling technology.