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03 Oct 08

Plant Tweak Could Let Toxic Soil Feed Millions | Wired Science from Wired.com

UC Riverside scientists have a breakthrough that would allow genetic engineering to enable plants to become tolerant of aluminum toxicity. Apparently, much of the world's potentially arable land has that aluminum toxicity, and therefore can't be used for food production. Ths would circumvent that problem, and possibly signal a breakthrough into the second wave of a Green Revolution. (The first one has kind of reached its limits.)

blog.wired.com/...plant-tweak-cou.html - Preview

wired_magazine agriculture bioneering genetic_engineering food crops paul_larsen

"Aluminum toxicity is a very limiting factor, especially in developing
countries, in South America and Africa and Indonesia," said biochemist Paul Larsen. "It's not like these
areas are devoid of plant life, but they're not crop plants. Among
agriculturally important plants, there aren't mechanisms for aluminum
tolerance."
There's no more room for farms in the developed world; demand for cropland is fueling deforestation in the rain forests of Latin America and Africa; and the limits of the Green Revolution, which increased global food production through the use of pesticides and industrial farming techniques, have been reached. Another revolution, say agronomists, is needed.
2 more annotations...
- There's no guarantee that the tweak will prove successful and safe -- but if it does, it could provide food for millions.
- "I don't expect to make any money off it," he said. "I'd like it to trickle down to the people who need it.
  
  He does worry that the technique could be used as an excuse to clear
  rain forests from currently aluminum-toxic soil. Instead of this, said
  Larsen, already-cut land could be made more productive.
  
  "If we can make use of the land that's available now, maybe we can make
  it so we don't have to cut forests down in the future," he said.