Your morning cereal or oatmeal. The bread on your sandwich. The corn chips for your snack, and the cookies for dessert. None would be possible with the humblest of ingredients: the seeds.
Seeds like wheat, corn and rice directly provide about 70 percent of the calories consumed by people every day. And they ultimately provide just about any morsel of food, either by providing feed for livestock or simply being grown into fruits and vegetables. It’s no overstatement to say that without them, civilization would be impossible.
But they need our assistance. They’re under pressure from climate change, and under stress to feed a growing population.
Scores of dedicated scientists spend their careers working to improve them. They are employing the newest scientific advances to produce new types that are larger, more nutritious, and more resilient to pressure.
Rodomiro Ortiz studies how plant breeding can help fulfill these goals. His research was recently published in Crop Science, a journal of this Crop Science Society of America.
As the science supporting seed improvements, plant breeding is the foundation for ensuring agriculture satisfies humanity’s needs.
“The seeds generated from plant breeding have desired traits that allow increases in productivity, reduce human malnutrition, improve genetic diversity in ecosystems, and ensure sustainable food production under the specter of global warming,” says Ortiz.
Classic plant breeding doesn’t add in additional DNA like genetic engineering does. Rather, plant breeders cross plants that each have uniquely powerful characteristics to make a new plant with several valuable traits. The identical process has been used by scientists and farmers for thousands of years to create better crops.
But now, plant breeders have access to much more information and more tools than ever before. For instance, the widespread use of DNA sequencing gives plant breeders huge troves of data about useful genes. By figuring out which genes give rise to which useful traits, plant breeders may create new varieties of plants much more quickly.
“Genome-derived knowledge of seed biology can enhance crop productivity, to improve food and nutritional supply through plant breeding,” says Ortiz.
But genes are just one part of this puzzle. Scientists like Ortiz have to know how the plant develops and what it looks like. In the past, scientists may have been able to easily look and know that one plant had, by way of instance, larger seeds. But now, improving seeds requires ever greater detail.
Enter phenotyping, the science of measurement. A plant phenotype is its entire manifestation of its genes within its environment. The height and color of the plant. Its seeds’ weight and shape. Its inclination to resist or succumb to disease — these are all the phenotype.
Obtaining this information is time intensive. A number of these traits are impossible for humans to even see. And seeds in particular are so small, measuring them is unrealistic. Tech comes to the rescue.
“Phenotyping seed traits is a major bottleneck to systematic analysis of seed variation,” says Ortiz. “Advances in digital imaging technology can automatically measure a variety of shape parameters using high resolution images of seeds.”
With those tools in hand, plant breeders may improve and develop new crop varieties faster than ever. Ortiz envisions making seeds larger, so each one has more calories to nourish people. Larger seeds may also help the next generation of plants quickly grow in the fields, prepared to generate a huge yield. And plant breeders are trying to make seed proteins nutritious or the fats within seeds secure enough to last on grocery store shelves for longer.
All those improvements mean stronger varieties, better food, for more people. So with your next spoonful of chewy oatmeal, think about the humble seed — and the innovative technology and know-how — supporting every snack.
Related Journal Article: https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csc2.20402