Twenty Percent Increased Yield with GMO Crops

It's science to bring more food to a hungry world and you know already the resistance GMO has received in this arena even while there's surprisingly little resistance toward the multiple other areas in which GMO is engaged.  (Science Daily:  Crop yield gets big boost with modified genes in photosynthesis)

It's a novel way the researchers have increased production since they observed plants have biochemical 'brakes' which reduce incoming light to avoid harm from too much of it.  They figured if they could reduce the time it takes to recover from changes in light such as passing shadows, they could increase the amount of photosynthesis to make for larger plants.  That resulted in up to twenty percent increases in the crop yield.

Tobacco leaves showing transient overexpression of genes involved in nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ), a system that protects plants from light damage. Red and yellow regions represent low NPQ activity, while blue and purple areas show high levels induced by exposure to light.

Credit: Lauriebeth Leonelli and Matthew Brooks/UC Berkeley

NPQ is the process by which the plant damps down areas on the leaf which are getting too much light and the picture shows examples of it changing as exposure changes.

See the article to learn more of the NPQ process but here we're interested in the problem they're trying to solve.

The work to boost crop productivity comes as concerns about food shortages rise with the world's population. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that food production will need to nearly double by 2050 to meet increasing demand. Yields of the world's major staple crops have not been increasing fast enough to meet this projected need.

"My attitude is that it is very important to have these new technologies on the shelf now because it can take 20 years before such inventions can reach farmer's fields," said Long. "If we don't do it now, we won't have this solution when we need it."

- Science Daily

As in just about anything on Ithaka, it's only doom and gloom if we fail to prepare and we see Dr Long is not willing to sit about and wait.

Here's the man who was developing high-yield rice in the sixties, Henry Beachell.  (WIKI:  Henry Beachell)

Yuan Longping is called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" because in the seventies he came up with a way to grow rice no-one even knew was possible.  It's estimated since the implementation of his techniques, rice production in China increased its yield enough to feed sixty million people and one man did that.  (WIKI:  Yuan Longping)

I got intrigued by Radin China IV (I think that was the name) which was a new variety of hybrid high-yield rice.  I heard about it in an Anthropology class in the early seventies as a possible way to deal with overpopulation.  That was about as far as it went since I didn't have a strong interest in crop production to get into the process myself but it sounded like an optimistic pursuit toward solving a problem.

Maybe you still want to think 'them debbul bitches at Monsanto jes want to steal my chickens' but perhaps consider this first:

This research was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Any new technology licensed from this work will be made freely available to farmers in poor countries in Africa and South Asia.

- Science Daily

'Debbul bitches at Monsanto,' huh.