Member

I am particularly talking here about my interest in African agriculture. The population of Africa is going to double in the next 30 years, and climate change is already accelerating out of control there. Unless we act quickly, we will be responsible for human tragedy on a very large scale. We have to ask ourselves: how do we breed plants that can resist the many different diseases and pests present in every country without using chemicals? How do we breed plants that can resist the all too frequent droughts, or plants that resist flooding? How do we breed maize that is salt tolerant, or a cocoa plant that is resistant to mildew or phytophthora? Perhaps more importantly, how do we breed crops that give children access to vital vitamins and minerals, deficits of which can cause blindness, stunting and cognitive degeneration? We need precision breeding now, without the dangers of too many off-target characteristics, which is inherent in the random mutations of the traditional breeding process.