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[SANET-MG] an unlikely scenario
Sustainable systems seem more promising for farmers of the developing
world than is the technology described below.
Published online before print September 8, 2005
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0505895102
Agricultural Sciences
Agriculture in the developing world: Connecting innovations in plant
research to downstream applications
( crop genomics )
Deborah P. Delmer
Food Security, the Rockefeller Foundation
Enhancing agricultural productivity in those areas of the world bypassed
by the Green Revolution will require new approaches that provide
incentives and funding mechanisms that promote the translation of new
innovations in plant science into concrete benefits for poor farmers.
Through better dialogue, plant breeders and laboratory scientists from
both the public and private-sectors need to find solutions for the key
constraints to crop production, many of which center around abiotic and
biotic stresses. The revolution in plant genomics has opened up new
perspectives and opportunities for plant breeders who can now apply
molecular markers to assess and enhance diversity in their germplasm
collections, to introgress valuable traits from new sources, and to
identify genes that control key traits. Functional genomics is also
providing another powerful route to the identification of such genes.
The ability to introgress beneficial genes under the control of specific
promoters through transgenic approaches is yet one more stepping stone
in the path to targeted approaches to crop improvement, and the new
sciences have identified a vast array of genes that have exciting
potential for crop improvement. For a few crops with viable markets,
such as maize and cotton, some of the traits developed by the private
sector are already showing benefits for farmers of the developing world,
but the public sector will need to develop new skills and overcome a
number of hurdles to carry out similar efforts for other crops and
traits useful to very poor farmers.
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