Two University of California, Davis, researchers have won prestigious national and international awards in recognition of their work using genomics to address livestock health and crop resilience in the wake of a changing climate.
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Coming from a long line of Iowa farmers, David Savage always thought he would do research to improve crops. That dream died in college, when it became clear that any genetic tweak to a crop would take at least a year to test; for some perennials and trees, it could take five to 10 years. Faced with such slow progress, he chose to study the proteins in photosynthetic bacteria instead. But the advent of CRISPR changed all that. Savage is now pivoting to molecular crop breeding, hoping to find ways to improve their carbon uptake and the amount of carbon they return to the soil. And he hopes to see these improved crops in fields within his lifetime, helping to boost crop yields but also to draw down the excess carbon in the atmosphere that is warming the planet and stash it underground.“ The advent of CRISPR basically allowed us to create new molecular tools for potentially skipping the slow aspects of plant tissue culture and plant genetic engineering, which are large barriers to doing
The world is going to need about 50% more food by 2050. Has the time come to roll out genetically modified crops that promise higher yields, are more resilient to climate change and reduce the carbon footprint of farming?