Short-and long-term challenges in crop breeding

• 来源期刊: 国家科学评论（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（2）
• 所属期刊栏目: EDITORIAL
• 页码范围: 1
• 页数: 1页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwab002

摘要

Agriculture provides the primary energy source and nutrients for humans,and is the key factor determining worldwide population and its basic health status.In the history of agriculture,desir-able traits beneficial for farming rather than natural growth have been artificially selected through breeding of new elite varieties.Each successful step in crop breeding,e.g.wild plant domestica-tion,crop introduction and the'Green Revolution',led to a pe-riod of rapid population growth.In the last seven decades after the Second World War,the world population has grown from 2.5 to 7 billion.Driven by rapid advances in science and technology,the rate of generating crop varieties is accelerating.Taking China as an example,the annual production of its major staple crop,rice,has increased from ?57 million tons in 1950 to more than 200 mil-lion tons at present.More importantly,in the past two decades,the rice grain quality has also been extensively improved,thanks to the discoveries of underlying complex genetic mechanisms.By the end of this century the world population will reach an esti-mated 10 to 12 billion,and agricultural productivity needs to in-crease by at least 50％[1,2].This imposes serious challenges in crop breeding.