Saturday, May 17, 2008
The brown plant hopper doesn't believe in Intelligent Design
And over the years has evolved to overcome several resistant plant strains and develop the ability to survive 100 times the level of pesticide needed to kill it 20 years ago. And the research needed to combat this pest has withered from underfunding and neglect over that same time.
This is a stark example of the many problems that are coming to light in the world’s agricultural system. Experts say that during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and development agencies lost focus on the importance of helping poor countries improve their agriculture.Funny, how nothing ever remains the same except the human ability to be surprised by what surprised past generations.
The budgets of institutions that delivered the world from famine in the 1970s, including the rice institute, have stagnated or fallen, even as the problems they were trying to solve became harder.
“People felt that the world food crisis was solved, that food security was no longer an issue, and it really fell off the agenda,” said Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the rice institute...
...Several dozen important varieties of rice have been lost from the institute’s gene bank through poor storage. Promising work on rice varieties that could withstand high temperatures and saltier water — ideal for coping with global warming and the higher sea levels that may follow — had to be abandoned.
A potential solution is at hand for the plant hopper problem. No fewer than 14 new types of genetic resistance have been discovered. But with the budget cuts, the institute has mounted no effort to breed these traits into widely used rice varieties.
Doing so now would take four to seven years, if money could be found.
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