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  Food crunch opens doors to bioengineered crops

January 9, 2009. Surging costs, population growth, and drought and other setbacks linked to global climate change are pressuring world food supplies, while soaring prices on the street have triggered riots and raised the number of people going hungry to more than 923 million, according to U.N. estimates.

With food demand forecast to increase by half by 2030, the incentive to use genetic engineering to boost harvests and protect precious crops from insects and other damage has never been greater. 

Biotechnology is bound to play an important role in the agriculture of the future, Robert Zeigler, director of the International Rice Research Institute, said in an interview with The Associated Press at IRRI's headquarters south of Manila in the Philippines.

Such crops "bring tremendous power and advantages to producers and consumers," Zeigler said, noting the potential savings from reduced use of farm chemicals and of fuel for the tractors to spread them.

After delaying the long-expected commercialization of GM grains for years, China's leaders in July endorsed a 13-year, $2.9 billion program to promote use of genetically altered crops and livestock. Beijing is on the verge of releasing an insect-resistant rice variety, Zeigler said.

Read the full story at High Plains/Midwest AG Journal.

Food: European and Asian quest for better rice

European and Asian scientists are working together to produce more fragrant, more nutritional rice. Having revealed the grain’s secrets researchers have come up with new types. They are striving to make a wide range of high quality rice available worldwide. The quest for super-aromatic, super-nutrient rice, that is the story in this recent edition of Futuris, a feature of EuroNews.  Watch the 8:30 video program that features Melissa Fitzgerald, head of IRRI's Grain Quality, Nutrition, and Postharvest Center.