Futurology

Futurology

	Futurology Is biotechnology the answer to feed the ever increasing human population in the next millennieum? Given the present acreage planted to staple crops and the increasing cost of agricultural inputs, coupled with the diminishing buying power of the rural masses, the prospect of meeting the food needs of developing countries by conventional agriculture appears rather bleak. Apart from staple crops such as wheat and rice, the production of pulse grains (including oil yielding grains), the traditional source of protein, has never shown any sizeable change during the last several years.
Research achievements in breeding high yielding and early maturing varieties of pulses and coarse grains (millets) have not been as spectacular as those of rice or wheat. The application of chemical fertilizers has been generally practiced in the cultivation of rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton or other cash crops whereas most pulses and millets are grown on marginal rain-fed lands with very little agronomic practices or inputs by way of fertilizers and pesticides. Elite cultivars of pulses and millets, eventhough developed by research institutes, are rarely available for large scale planting by the average small-scale land holder.
Intensive farming is no doubt practiced in wheat cultivation but this is rarely seen in pulse or millet cultivation. Biotechnology research in developing countries is rudimentary awl not expansive because of the cost involved. With this scenario, transgenic crop technology, so well entrenched with private research enterprise in the USA and Europe, has to obviously cater to the needs of developing countries. These large multinational companies who have patented their inventions are only eager to sell the technology to the developing world. Granting that a novel genotype meets with the rigorous standards of any country that is willing to buy such an innovation the products from such an invention obviously become expensive.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to put all efforts in developing transgenic plants from our own research endeavors. Supplementing traditional sources of food with unconventional sources of food has always been an attractive alternative to food shortages. One of the unconventional source is the single cell protein (SCP) from bacteria and fungi grown on inexpensive media containing hydrolysates of biomass. The biotechnology involved in converting lignocelluloses from biomass has unfortunately not reached a stage of perfection to yield growth media rich in monosaccharides. Secondly, SCP has always remained as a source of animal feed and more rigorous tests including acceptability tests have to be done before advocating SCP as a supplement to traditional food.
	Another strategy is to minimize chemical inputs in agriculture or to abolish them completely by making plants self-sufficient with regard to their nutrition and protection from pests and diseases. Significant headway in this direction has been made in recent years by developing transgenic plants resistant to diseases, pests and herbicides. However, success has not been achieved in nif gene transfer to crop plants and therefore, fertilizer nitrogen and phosphorus will continue to be vital for obtaining sustained crop yields.

Conceptual transgenic plants of the next millennium. On the left is a rice plant, a representative of the monocotyledonous plants and on the right is a typical dicotyledonous Plant (agricultural biotechnology marvels)

Conceptual Transgenic Plants of the Next Millennium. On the Left is a Rice Plant, a Representative of the Monocotyledonous Plants and On the Right is a Typical Dicotyledonous Plant (Agricultural Biotechnology Marvels)

What has been a significant achievement in recent years is the success in nodulating roots of heat and oilseed rape seedling by inoculating roots of wheat and oil seed rape seedlings by inoculating roots with rhizobia under defined laboratory conditions.

The other achievement has been the demonstration by field experiments in India that inoculating soil with nitrogen fixing microorganisms could save upto 30 kg N/ha under ideal agronomic and pest-free conditions. However, such savings are not often reproducible in farmer's fields because of vagaries in the environment and the possible failure of bacteria to get established in the rhizosphere.

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