粮食危机-一系列有趣的文章

随着经济危机，环境恶化等因素。未来粮食供应是否足够已是未知数。此问题在贫穷国家显得更严重。报告指出目前8亿人未获得足够粮食供给，还有13亿人每天生活少过1美元。到了2050年，估计人口从61 亿人上升到93亿人，这显示我们需把农作物生产提高到至少50%,这将是严峻的挑战。无论如何克服此问题是刻不容缓了

以下这段是摘自我的研究报告：

Excerpt of my report:-

Abiotic stresses such as extreme temperature, drought and salinity as well as biotic stress like pathogen infections significantly affect growth and reproduction of plants. This environmental constraint is one of the major factors account for low productivity and quality in corps and has worsened food security issue faced today. For instance, developing countries in which more than 800 million people are short of food supply and 1.3 billion individuals living less than USD 1 a day. Furthermore, an estimated human population rise from 6.1 billion to 9.3 billion in year 2050 indicates that an additional 50% of food production is required in order to maintain food supply (Flowers, 2004). Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of stress tolerance in plants and developing stress tolerant crops are essential to overcome a potential food crisis.

Flowers,T.J. (2004) Improving crop salt tolerance. Journal of Experimental Botany 55:307-319

More articles can refer to the website/ references therein:-

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People

H. Charles J. Godfray, John R. Beddington, Ian R. Crute, Lawrence Haddad, David Lawrence, James F. Muir, Jules Pretty, Sherman Robinson, Sandy M. Thomas, and Camilla Toulmin (12 February 2010)
Science 327 (5967), 812. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1185383]