United Kingdom
February 23, 2018
Last Saturday we invited a small group of farmers to join us at our GEN2050 conference in Leicester to discuss the developments of technology and resources by 2050. With the population predicted to grow to more than 9 billion people and food requirements to be at least 100% more, we need to farm more on the land we have – or will have – available by then.
One thought is that there will need to be a shift in diet from crops being fed to animals to being directly for human consumption. Currently 35% of the grain grown is fed to livestock, 9% is used for industry including biofuels. An option suggested at the conference is to grow crops in a hydroponic system in ‘vertical’ farms, which would mean more food being grown and in areas that can’t grow currently - busy and vast cities. Technology will also be getting better with satellite technology and automated processes taking over some of the tasks necessary to grow field crops.
Dr Alexander Döring, International Oilseed Rape Product Manager, spoke about the developments of DSV’s OSR breeding and the traits that they are looking for in an oilseed rape suitable for 2050 cropping. The thoughts are that OSR could possibly become a protein crop rather than an oil crop due to its high protein quality. With changes to the amino acid profile, it is even be developed to replace Omega 3 currently taken from fish!
Predictions by DSV can see oil content increasing over the next decade but will start to peak out – will we see oil contents any higher than 55%?!?
Oilseed rape has come on a long way in the last 30 years, both oil content and yields have increased and there has been the development of Clearfield chemistry. Other traits developed for oilseed rape including the DSV PNN breeding initiative, verticillium wilt and and TuYV tolerance. One question that could influence breeding of agricultural crops will be GMO – will we see that in the next 30 years in the UK and/or Europe? So for breeding the 2050 oilseed rape variety – the world is our oyster.. but then it takes 8-12 years to breed an Oilseed rape so only 3 whole generations to go!
Topics
Species
