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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.
Plant research projects are increasingly producing large systematic collections of phenotype data. But how can it be stored so that others can easily use it and that proper credit goes to the creators of the data?
Agricultural research is experiencing a resurgence. The Gates Foundation is leading the charge in the hopes of solving food security in the developing world.
People have learned much from being fed, clothed, sheltered and medicated by plants over millennia. Such traditional knowledge can yield practical discoveries and an understanding of our societies.
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.