Facts You Must Know

Did you know?

1. CASSAVA

Cassava is also known as manihot, cassava was first cultivated in Brazil and Paraguay, before it found its way to Europe via returning conquistadors. Cassava was used to make pancakes, as well as a ceremonial drink called cauim.

Cassava roots contain cyanogenic glucosides: compounds that are converted to cyanide in the presence of an enzyme also native to cassava. Raw, and especially drought-grown cassavas are high in such toxins. To remove them, cassavas must be cooked thoroughly: they are peeled, soaked in water, squeezed until dry, and then toasted.

II. The worldwide Cassava Biotech Network unites scientists and stakeholders in producing and cultivating better cassava. In line with all this, a group of scientists led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is also working to complete the sequence of the cassava genome. In the offing are varieties with more or better quality starch. A cassava engineered to be 2.5 times larger than conventional varieties has also been developed, and is now being studied. (Sources:http://www.floridata.com)


2. AGRICULTURE

Agriculture must keep up with growing humanity’s ever greater needs. This section explores how agriculture has changed the way we live, and how it may need to evolve further in order to produce food for the next generation.

We’ve got only a few plants to live on?

About 99% of our agricultural production depends on only 24 different domesticated crop species. The top ten domesticated crops in the world, in terms of production volume, are maize, wheat, rice, potato, sugar beet, soybean, cassava, barley, sweet potato, and tomato (Sources:http://www.foodreference.com/and http://faostat.fao.org)

Feeding Asia in the next quarter of a century will require both food and land, and in large amounts? Within the next 25 years, farmers in Asia must increase their cereal yields by 50-75%, simply to meet the demands of an increasing population. Cropland and population are not uniformly distributed, especially in China, which holds 20-25% of the world’s population - but only 7% of the world’s productive land. (Source: Martina McGloughlin, University of California, Davis).

We will soon need a large food supply… 

 A VERY LARGE food supply?

To feed itself over the next forty years, mankind will have to produce a quantity of food larger than ALL the food produced SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. (Source: Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., “Fun Facts to Know And Tell About Biotechnology,” 1999)

Without pesticides, many more of our crops would have been destroyed?

Without pesticides, 70% of the world food crop would be lost. At present, even with pesticide use, 42% of our planted crops are destroyed by insects and pathogenic fungi. (Source: E. C. Oerke and colleagues, “Conclusion and Perspectives. In Crop Production,” and “Crop Protection: Estimated Losses in Food and Cash Crops,” 1994)

Fertilizers really do make a difference in agriculture?

Fertilizers can increase yields of food crops from 1.5- to 2-fold. Without fertilizers, farmers would need an extra 400-600 million hectares (988-1,482 million acres) of cropland to make up for their losses. Moreover, without fertilizer technology, current food production would only have been achieved by plowing up an extra 2,000 million hectares (4,942 acres)! (Source: Anthony Trevawas, “The Population/Biodiversity Paradox. Agricultural Efficiency to Save Wilderness,” Plant Physiology, 2001)


3. POTATOES

The potato is credited with the rise of Andean civilizations, including the Incas, who started farming the root crop in 200 BC. The Incas also developed many uses for the potato: raw slices were placed on broken bones, carried to prevent rheumatism, and eaten with other foods to prevent indigestion. Incas also used the potato as a time keeper: units were correlated to how long it took to cook a potato. 

The Spanish conquistadors brought the root crop back to Europe in 1570, where the potato became a feared vegetable. People attributed poison to its strange shape, and to the fact that it was grown below ground. It was accused of causing a variety of diseases, including leprosy, fever, tuberculosis, and rickets. When tempers and speculation finally died down in Europe, use of the potato became so widespread that whole populations and races could not live without it. When the potato crop in Ireland was devastated by fungus, causing the “Irish Potato Famine,” and forcing many Irish to immigrate. The population of Ireland decreased by nearly two million from 1847 to 1851. 

There may be some truth to potato’s poisonous reputation, however: its wild relatives are in fact very toxic due to the presence of molecules called glycoalkaloids, which have caused severe human poisonings and near death.

Biotech potatoes are already available on the market, and are engineered to be resistant to the Colorado potato beetle, Potato Virus Y, or to Potato Leafroll Virus. In the works: Potatoes with higher calcium or protein content, resistance to late blight, and the ability to grow in near freezing temperatures. (Sources:http://www.oregonspuds.com and http://www.indepthinfo.com)


4. PEANUTS

Peanuts have been around for 2,000 years: from their home in South America, these legumes traveled to Europe and Africa through Spanish and Portuguese traders, before traveling to the North American South courtesy of African slaves.

Although GM peanuts are not yet available on the market, scientists are working to remove the crop’s allergens, as well as to make peanuts resistant to fungal infections. (Sources: http://foodreference.com and http://www.vegsoc.org).


5. LEGUMES (SOYA BEANS)

Soybeans were first cultivated in China in 2838 B.C., where farmers fed it to their families and livestock, and where its moldy form was used to treat skin infections. Its cultivation spread to Japan, Korea, then Southeast Asia, before making its way to Europe in 1712. 

In Japan, soybean is processed into miso, a soybean paste which has undergone slow fermentation. Miso is often referred to as the “Wine of the Orient,” and has been eaten for over a thousand years. It contains alkaloids which attract heavy metals and expel them from the body. It also neutralizes the effects of smoking and other environmental pollutants, lowers cholesterol, and aids digestion when eaten unpasteurized. 

As for soybean oil, it can be found in margarine, salad dressings, canned foods, sauces, bakery goods, and processed fried foods. Soybean is also used as an environmentally-safe fuel, and is finding use in many city buses and trucks.

GM soybeans are planted on 54.4 million hectares (134.4 million acres) of land all over the world, making them the most widely cultivated biotech crop. GM soybeans are bred or engineered to either have greater amounts of oleic acid or lower amounts of linolenic acid, or to be resistant to herbicides. Work on soybeans never ends: its genome is still being sequenced, and scientists are working on soybean varieties that are tolerant to pests and abiotic stresses, as well as varieties that are more nutritious. (Sources:http://www.minnesota-china.com, http://www.foodreference.com and http://agnews.colostate.edu).


6. MILLET

 Millet is the world’s sixth most important grain, and has been around for 8,000 years. It has found use as food, livestock feed, building material, and fuel. About 40% of the world’s millet comes from Africa, where it is planted over 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) to meet the needs of 500 million people.

Millet has also been used in brewing: the 3,000 year old bousa (also known as boza, bouza, and booza) from Egypt is thought to be the source of the word “booze,” which now refers to any alcoholic beverage.

In its unhulled form, millet can have as much as 11% more protein than rice. It is also rich in vitamins A and B, iron, phosphorous, magnesium, and manganese.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is currently working on marker-assisted introgression of drought-tolerance into pearl millet. ICRISAT scientists are also mapping salinity tolerance in the crop, as well as its ability to take up nutrients, and to produce more carotenoids in its grains. These are especially important for 

growing millet in Africa and South Asia, where millions of people depend upon it for survival.

(Sources:www.foodreference.com, www.trivia-library.com, www.beerbooks.com and www.cgiar.org)


7. WHEAT

Wheat began as a coarse-grained variety called Einkorn, 10,000 years ago in Turkey. After domestication by ancient man, wheat became so widespread, it was even used as payment (in the form of bread) for pyramid builders in Egypt!

More food is made from wheat than any other grain crop now available. It is so abundant, indeed, that every person in Bulgaria consumes about 600 lbs annually (compared with 190 lbs per person annually in the U.S.). A bushel of wheat is made up of 1 million individual kernels, enough to bake 73 one-pound loaves of white bread.

The wheat genome is a large, complicated mix of genes, and has challenged scientists for decades. A good number of projects are now underway to sequence the 17 gigabase-pair wheat genome, as well as to test current varieties for resistance to scab, an important disease of the crop. (Sources:http://www.kswheat.com and http://www.foodreference.com).

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