Food for the World

In 2008, a little less than 6.7 billion people were living on the earth. According to estimates of the United Nations, they will be 9 billion around the year 2050. Improved welfare means increasing demand for food in many countries. More and more people are living in cities and cannot produce their food themselves. Soil and water are natural resources which are getting scarcer and scarcer. Rising crude oil prices entail stronger demand for alternative energies.

Productivity is the key to global food safety, and plant breeding is a key to enhancing the productivity of the global area under cultivation. The yield potential of many of our crops has not yet been fully tapped. Our new understanding of the interrelation and interaction between properties of plants and the environmental conditions and the research done into genetic and physiological processes holds promise of further substantial increases in productivity.

Appropriate varieties need to be developed for regions with less favourable climatic conditions, and seeds or plants for planting of these varieties must be made available. The development of new varieties of our crops is a promising approach to increase yield. The varieties have to be adapted to the respective local conditions, e.g. in dry areas or to high salinity in soils. In other cases, new crops can be introduced which had previously been unknown in this particular region.