Headline 'Aug 21, 2015'' HUNGER BY HUNGRY '''

''' HUNGER BY HUNGRY '''

ALMIGHTY GOD    -save you, from ever having to deal with the Agriculture Ministry in any of the Developing World country.

A Pakistani farmer frets as he survey his drought-stunted crop. A Nigerian yam farmer digs up shrunken tubers. A Costa Rican coffee baron lays off hundreds of workers because a fungus has destroyed his harvest.

A distinguished writer had planted cherry trees in upstate New York one spring, only to see them denuded by Japanese beetles.

Such disasters are increasingly common on a planet buffeted by climate change and worldwide commerce, where heat burns crops, soil has been ruined over-farming and drought, and bugs ride across oceans to feast on defenceless plants.

Agronomists have been working on these problems for years, but the rapid growth of humans makes overcoming these challenges increasingly urgent.

*** ''If we can't feed the world, it will eventually feed on us.''' *** 

THE UNITED NATIONS and experts say global food production will have to double by 2050, at which point the world population is expected to have- Grown from  7 billion today  to  well beyond    9 billion. 

That's just just 30 plus years away, and there will be no new arable land then. 

In face, there probably will be less. For example,   73 million acres of land in the U.S. were lost between  2002 and  2012,  according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] ; more was certainly made fallow during the last several years of severe drought.

*Looking ahead, growing conditions will only get harsher.*

The solution, though, appears to be on the way: In 2012, a new tool was invented that revolutionizes how scientists can examine   -and manipulate-  genetic processes.

It's called  CRISPR  -Cas9,  and unlike its predecessors in the world of genetic modification, it is highly specific, allowing scientists to zero  in on a single gene and turn it  on or off, remove it or exchange it for for a different gene. 

Early signs suggest that the tool will be an  F-16  jet fighter compared with the Stone age spear of grafting, the traditional, painstaking means of breeding a new plant hybrid. 

Biologists and geneticists are confident it can help them build a second Green revolution if we'll let them.

''We now have a very easy, very fast and very efficient technique for rewriting the genome,'' said one of its inventors Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, when the  Innovative Genomics Initiative was launched in 2014.

''It allows us to to do the experiments that have been impossible before.'' The speed and simplicity of  CRISPR  have momentous implications for Agriculture. The process could lead to plants that can withstand what an increasingly overheated nature has in store.

It could also result in a more nutritious yield, from less plant. Researchers have glommed on to it    -they've already published more than 150 related scientific papers, and the publication rate is accelerating.

''It's to keep up with all the papers that are coming out,'' says Joyce Van Eck, who runs labs focused on the study of genetics based crop improvement at Cornell University's Royce Thompson Institute. ''The field is exploding.''

CRISPR stands for brace yourself   -Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.    The name comes from a trick that bacteria use to protect themselves from lethal viruses and phages, little cellular saboteur.

''The palindromic repeats''  [gene sequences that read the same from either end] are immune response elements, genetic code the bacteria copy and incorporate from invading viruses so that-

If they return, they can be easily identified. It's a bit like posting an FBI wanted poster or splashing enemy soldiers with glow-in-the-dark paint.

The advance research, it now seems, has started putting its foot to the accelerator of natural plant processes.

The battle for the feeding the future inhabitants of mother earth is on, for sure

The Honour and Serving this very important ''Operational Research'' will continue regularly in the future. Thank you for reading and see Ya all on the following one.

With respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teachers researching and studying Agriculture. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Organic Seedlings ''

Good night and God bless.

SAM Daily Times – The Voice of the Voiceless