Chiara Tonelli, Professor of Genetics at the University of Milan, Italy
The global population will hit the seven billion mark by 2012 and is forecast to reach nine billion by 2050. One of the major challenges of the future will be to cover the growing needs of a rising population. The problem is that there is little scope for enlarging the land available for growing wheat, rice or millet. In addition, the demand for grain as animal feed and to cover the growing demand for energy is also increasing.
Increasing crop productivity
Global climate change is likely to further intensify the problems. Science must answer the following question: how can we produce more food from a shrinking area of arable land under increasingly difficult environmental conditions? One approach is to improve the productivity of crops by means of biotechnology. This theory is put forward by renowned plant scientist Chiara Tonelli, Professor of Genetics at the University of Milan, in an essay which can be read here.