Abstract
The current trajectory for crop yields is insufficient to nourish the world’s population by 20501. Greater and more consistent crop production must be achieved against a backdrop of climatic stress that limits yields, owing to shifts in pests and pathogens, precipitation, heat-waves and other weather extremes. Here we consider the potential of plant sciences to address post-Green Revolution challenges in agriculture and explore emerging strategies for enhancing sustainable crop production and resilience in a changing climate. Accelerated crop improvement must leverage naturally evolved traits and transformative engineering driven by mechanistic understanding, to yield the resilient production systems that are needed to ensure future harvests.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 109-118 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 575 |
| Issue number | 7781 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Nov 2019 |
Funding
Acknowledgements We apologize to those authors whose research could not be cited owing to space limits. We thank P. J. Franks and E. Buckler for discussions, and A. Digrado and C. Benjamin for assistance with figures. Research in the authors’ laboratories was supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation to J.I.S. (MCB-1900567) and J.B.-S. (IOS-1546879; IOS-1810468; IOS-1856749); the US National Institutes of Health to J.I.S. (GM060396-ES010337); the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to J.B.-S. (2017-67013-26194; 2019-67013-29313); the Max-Planck Society and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy (EXC-2048/1, project 390686111 and Priority Program 2125 ‘DECRyPT’) to J.E.P.; a sub-award to E.A.A. from the University of Illinois as part of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project (OPP1060461), UK AID and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research; and the Engineering the Nitrogen Symbiosis in Africa project (OPP1172165) sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gatsby Foundation grants to G.E.D.O.
