Description

Global food security is a major issue, and is likely to become increasingly important in the coming decades. One way to address this is to increase the ability of crops to maintain their growth in sub-optimal environmental conditions, such as in areas with low rainfall or saline soils. One potential innovation is to irrigate crops that have elevated salinity tolerance with seawater that has been partially desalinised, the energy required for partial desalination being much less than that required for full desalination, so an economically viable agriculture based on this is more achievable. In this talk, some of the plant science used to try to increase plant salinity tolerance will be introduced. Genetics, genomics and new quantitative phenotyping approaches are providing great promise for major new innovations in crop improvement. The application of these technologies provides opportunities to significantly increase abiotic stress tolerance of crops, and thus contribute to increasing agricultural production in many regions.