Plant breeding can help increase crop productivity, reducing human malnutrition

Your morning grain or oatmeal. The bread on your sandwich. The corn chips for your tastes, and the biscuits for dessert. It would not be possible for one with the most humble ingredients: the seed.

Seeds such as wheat, rice, and corn directly provide about 70% of the calories that people eat each day. And eventually they provide almost all food, either by feeding them stock or by growing them into fruits and vegetables. It is no exaggeration to say that civilization would not be possible without seeds.

But seeds need our help. They are under pressure from climate change, and under pressure to feed a growing population.

Scores of dedicated scientists spend their careers working to develop seeds. They use the latest scientific advances to make seeds bigger, more nutritious, and more resistant to stress.

Rodomiro Ortiz explores how plant reproduction can help achieve these goals. His research was published in Crop Science, a journal of the American Crop Science Association.

As the science behind seed developments, plant breeding is the foundation for ensuring that agriculture meets the needs of humanity.

The seeds generated from plant breeding have essential properties that allow an increase in productivity, reduce human malnutrition, improve genetic diversity in ecosystems, and ensure food production. sustained by global warming. “

Rodomiro Ortiz, Professor of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Classical plant breeding does not involve additional DNA as does genetic engineering. Instead, plant breeders overtake plants that have particularly strong traits to create a new plant with a number of beneficial traits. The same process has been used by farmers and scientists for thousands of years to produce better crops.

But today, plant breeders have access to more information and more tools than ever before. For example, the widespread use of DNA classification provides plant breeders with big data about useful genes. By finding out which genes cause useful traits, plant breeders can develop new types of crops much faster.

“Genome-derived knowledge of seed biology can contribute to crop productivity, to improving food and nutrient supply through plant breeding,” says Ortiz.

But genes are just one piece of the puzzle. Scientists like Ortiz need to know how the plant grows and what it looks like. In the past, scientists might have been able to easily look and tell that one plant, for example, had larger seeds. But today, seed development needs more detail.

Enter phenotyping, measurement science. A plant phenotype is how it expresses its genes in its environment. The height and color of the plant. The weight and shape of its seeds. His understanding of resistance to disease or acceptance – these are all the phenotype.

This information is time consuming. Some of these signs are impossible for people to even see. And seeds, in particular, are so small, measuring them by hand is impractical. Technology is coming to the rescue.

“Phenotyping seed traits is a major obstacle to a systematic study of seed differentiation,” says Ortiz. “Advances in digital imaging technology can automatically measure several shape parameters using high-resolution images of a seed.”

With these tools in hand, seed plant breeders can advance and develop new crop varieties faster than ever before. Oviz envisions make seeds bigger, so each one has more calories to feed people. Larger seeds can help the next generation of crops to grow quickly in the fields, ready to produce great yields. And plant breeders are trying to make seed proteins more nutritious or the fat within seeds stable enough to survive on grocery store shelves longer.

Each of these improvements means stronger seeds, and better food, for more people. So with your next spoonful of chewy oatmeal, think of the humble seed – and the advanced technology and experience – behind each bite.