Serious Stuff from Plant Scientists

Some time back quite a number of plant scientists around the world were asked about what they thought were the most important questions facing plant science. The responses were distilled down to one hundred important questions facing plant science research. As you might guess some of these questions are pretty heavy duty. Here's a sample. Q2. Which crops must be grown and which sacrificed to feed the billions? Here's a snippet of the answer: "we may be forced to choose between production of staple food crops to feed the world population and the production of luxury crops, such as tea, coffee, cocoa ..." Aaaaaaah! Who could face that without coffee? And this would be in addition to improving crop productivity and using more previously forested land for food production. This isn't a future you're going to want to see, but our children's children may well see it. At times it's hard not to be pessimistic. Some of you may want to comment about some of the other questions or the answers as we presently see them. HT to Botanical Garden and Conservation International.