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Plants and population: Is there time?
Pages 5903-5907

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From page 5903... ... "Genetic manipulation of plant species is as old as plant breeding, but its modern aspects offer exciting new possibilities for disease control as well as for greater productivity. It is becoming increasingly possible to map and identify the genes controlling a variety of functions and to introduce or extract genetic factors for a variety of traits, including disease resistance, increased yields, tolerance to heat, cold, and drought, photoperiod insensitivity, and increased amino acid content of food products. Read the entire page →
From page 5904... ... Cereal production per person world-wide peaked in the mid-1980s, declined over the next decade, then began to grow again in the mid-199Os, according to speaker Nikos Alexandratos. Historical economic analyses showed that the decline, far from being a first harbinger of inadequate world food supply, was largely the result both of deliberate efforts to decrease overproduction in Europe and North America, where prices fell because production capacity exceeded demand, and of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Read the entire page →
From page 5905... ... Speakers Kishore and John Ryals noted that transgenic crops expressing the insecticidal Bacillus thur~ngiensis endotoxin gene also showed surprising increases in productivity, apparently because reduced insect damage indirectly increases disease resistance. Ryals sketched out the rapid progress in plant genomics that promises to make available an unprecedented variety of individual plant genes useful for improving crop plants. Read the entire page →
From page 5906... ... Several of the economists, including panelist Kenneth Arrow, pointed out that today's chronic widespread hunger results largely from inadequate cash incomes among the poor, not from inadequate global production of food. Given appropriate governmental policies, increasing the capacity of poor farmers to grow food could raise their incomes at the same time that it would increase the local food supply. Read the entire page →
From page 5907... ... Ehrlich, Daniel Janzen, William Murdoch, Walter Reid, Don Roberts, Vernon Ruttan, Robert Socolow, Matthew Thomas, David Tilman, and Catherine Woteki. We thank the National Academy of Sciences for sponsoring this Colloquium. Read the entire page →

From page 5903...

... "Genetic manipulation of plant species is as old as plant breeding, but its modern aspects offer exciting new possibilities for disease control as well as for greater productivity. It is becoming increasingly possible to map and identify the genes controlling a variety of functions and to introduce or extract genetic factors for a variety of traits, including disease resistance, increased yields, tolerance to heat, cold, and drought, photoperiod insensitivity, and increased amino acid content of food products.

Read the entire page →

From page 5904...

... Cereal production per person world-wide peaked in the mid-1980s, declined over the next decade, then began to grow again in the mid-199Os, according to speaker Nikos Alexandratos. Historical economic analyses showed that the decline, far from being a first harbinger of inadequate world food supply, was largely the result both of deliberate efforts to decrease overproduction in Europe and North America, where prices fell because production capacity exceeded demand, and of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Read the entire page →

From page 5905...

... Speakers Kishore and John Ryals noted that transgenic crops expressing the insecticidal Bacillus thur~ngiensis endotoxin gene also showed surprising increases in productivity, apparently because reduced insect damage indirectly increases disease resistance. Ryals sketched out the rapid progress in plant genomics that promises to make available an unprecedented variety of individual plant genes useful for improving crop plants.

Read the entire page →

From page 5906...

... Several of the economists, including panelist Kenneth Arrow, pointed out that today's chronic widespread hunger results largely from inadequate cash incomes among the poor, not from inadequate global production of food. Given appropriate governmental policies, increasing the capacity of poor farmers to grow food could raise their incomes at the same time that it would increase the local food supply.

Read the entire page →

From page 5907...

... Ehrlich, Daniel Janzen, William Murdoch, Walter Reid, Don Roberts, Vernon Ruttan, Robert Socolow, Matthew Thomas, David Tilman, and Catherine Woteki. We thank the National Academy of Sciences for sponsoring this Colloquium.

Read the entire page →

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Plants and population: Is there time? Pages 5903-5907

Plants and population: Is there time?
Pages 5903-5907