Over the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, political conflict and economic crises have driven society to an in escapable crossroads where we must face decisions about balancing all of humanity’s needs in an uncertain future. Among the most pressing questions is how to feed a growing population without expanding our footprint or exhausting already dwindling natural resources.
According to the United Nations, more than 800 million people faced hunger in 2020, and if population estimates are correct, there will be nearly 2 billion more humans to feed on Earth by 2050. But 33% of the world’s land surface is already used for agriculture. According to a recent report by World Resources Institute, feeding all of us is going to require major advancements to boost food production, reduce food waste and increase access to nutritious food for the most vulnerable people.
Starting with the Staples
Considered a foundation of human civilization, wheat provides 20% of the daily calories consumed by the global population. But the wheat we eat today has been cultivated over thousands of years to produce high yields, large grains and other such traits. Breeding in those traits has meant breeding out the genetic diversity that could help domestic wheat adapt to changing environmental conditions and emerging pests.
Now, Vijay Tiwari, an assistant professor in the department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, is working to breed diversity and resilience back into the staple crop. To do that on a global scale he had to consider that pests, pathogens and environmental conditions vary around the world, so wheat grown in India needs different adaptability genes than wheat grown in Brazil or Kansas. That’s why Tiwari and a team of researchers in six different countries across four continents are searching for genes in an ancient variety of wild wheat that have been bred out of, or turned down in, modern domestic wheat. If bred back in, those genes could confer resilience against threats that are specific to their corner of the world.
“Scientists can insert genes from other plants that they know will provide the desired outcome, but genetically modified wheat, or GMO wheat, is not acceptable in most of the wheat-growing countries,” Tiwari explained. “So, we need to find other ways to rapidly improve wheat to help feed the nearly eight billion people in the world. With this project, we can do this with simple breeding.”
Adding Protein
While Tiwari learns to breed resilience into grains, soil scientist Ray Weil is discovering how to pack protein into legumes. The second most-widely grown crop family worldwide, legumes, like soybeans and chickpeas, are an important source of protein for both humans and livestock. Plant-based protein is expected to become increasingly important for meeting the nutritional needs of a global population whose protein demands are expected to grow dramatically in coming decades.
But protein-rich plants like soy tend to be low in two essential amino acids that people and animals need for optimal nutrition. Most research on this problem has focused on genetic modification or plant breeding, but Weil, who is a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology, takes a different approach. An expert in soil chemistry, Weil understood that low sulfur content in soils could be limiting the ability of soybean plants to produce the optimal nutritional balance of proteins and amino acids. He suspected that adding sulfur to soil might translate into higher, more effective protein levels in soybeans. And it did. Weil’s sulfur fertilization experiments nearly doubled the amino acids, and thus the usable protein content in soybeans.
“Our long-term aim is to work on grain legumes like beans, peanuts and cowpeas in Africa,” Weil said.
“This approach is a potential new tool for increasing food security by enhancing plant-based protein.”
The Goodness of Greens
As any good nutritionist knows, people need veggies. But greens can harbor harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella. Associate Professor Shirley Micallef and graduate student Xingchen Liu discovered that Salmonella bacteria persisted at lower levels on plants subjected to drought than plants grown under regular watering conditions. They also found that stressed plants accumulated higher levels of certain beneficial compounds such as flavonoids and other antioxidants.
The research team Micallef leads in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture is now experimenting with lettuce and kale to understand the relationship between stress, the level of beneficial compounds, and bacteria that can cause spoilage and food-borne illness.
“We now have a controlled environment agriculture industry with plants being grown in greenhouses where water and light can be easily manipulated,” Micallef said. “This is an opportunity for us to develop a set of low-tech recommendations for farmers to improve the nutritional quality of leafy greens while enhancing food safety and extending shelf-life all at the same time.”
Shelf-life is an important issue, because up to 30% of food produced around the world goes to waste, in part due to spoilage. And in many places, the food is grown hundreds or even thousands of miles from where it is eventually consumed.
That often translates into high prices for fresh, healthy produce, and contributes to the inaccessibility of healthy diets for around 3 billion people in every region of the world.
Moving the Farm Inside
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is a technology-based approach to growing food that can solve some of the problems of land use, costs and accessibility among other concerns. Methods range from industrial-scale indoor aquaponic systems (where crops grown in baths of water are fertilized by waste from edible fish grown in adjacent tanks) to home window-sill hydroponic gardens where city dwellers can harvest salads, herbs and microgreens.
CEA offers the promise of large quantities of sustainably produced, nutritious food, but many of the technologies are still relatively new in the US. In some cases, best management practices are still being established, and UMD researchers from multiple departments and laboratories are working to answer questions such as how to maintain food safety and reduce food-borne illnesses, and which growing methods produce the most nutritious and marketable products.
By applying cutting edge genomics, advanced chemical analyses, creative engineering and good old agricultural know-how, AGNR faculty are developing solutions to the myriad challenges of feeding a growing population. Through sophisticated research, they are developing applications that are often deceptively simple, easily transferable, and replicable around the world. All key factors that are necessary for society to progress along a sustainable, healthy, nutritious path toward feeding humanity long into the future.
by Kimbra Cultip : Momentum Summer 2022