How Will We Feed the World? - PLOS Biologue

"PLOS has just launched a new Collection, “The Promise of Plant Translational Research”. Here’s why we did it, and what we hope to achieve.   The human race has a very serious problem; so serious that millions will die unless we solve it. It all started about 10,000 years ago. Up until then we’d lived as hunter-gatherers, and our humble lifestyle limited our numbers. But then we started to explore the benefits of exploiting the land more effectively, and agriculture was born. This technological suite of seed collection, sowing, irrigation, weeding and harvest allowed the same land to support many more of us.   Over the millennia we bred better crops (hexaploid wheat from emmer, maize from teosinte, paddy rice from Oryza rufipogon), systematically mechanised most aspects of the process (ox-drawn plough, seed drill, combine harvester), and artificially fertilised the soil (animal manure, the Haber process). And of course more food means more kids, and more kids need… You get the picture – a snowballing dependency on ever-improving the efficiency of our food production. All grown – by plants – using the solar energy that hits our finite planet.  The problem is that while population increases exponentially, food production increases only arithmetically. Seven billion souls – and counting – currently share our planet, with a projected population of nine billion by 2040. While the Green Revolutionof the late 20th century went some way to keeping productivity in pace with demand, feeding these extra mouths will require a substantial increase in agricultural output while competing with the burgeoning population for valuable land and water resources. Furthermore, if a population is able to achieve food security, along with health care and education, people will tend to limit family size of their own accord, keeping population in check. So working to achieve food security for the world’s billions offers a constructive way out of the debacle.  PLOS recognises that many of these problems (and the need for attendant solutions) impinge directly on those people and countries least able to break through the pay-wall that many scientific journals use to guard their content. For translational plant research, more than most fields,  Open Access is crucial to maximise the availability and utility of research by those who need it most. We, and the rest of the scientific community, can facilitate information and knowledge exchange by promoting Open Access.  What our Collection aims to do is a) open up the debate about the urgent need for plant translational research, b) discuss the ways in which scientific research and technological advance can meet this need, and c) encourage the submission of such research to Open Access journals, like those of the PLOS family.  What can you do? Firstly, read the inaugural articles of the Collection that we’ve just published in PLOS Biology (see below). I’d recommend starting with themagnificently punchy Perspective by Ottoline Leyser, which lays out the scale of the problem and exhorts us to ignore red herrings and concentrate on the pressing task in hand. Secondly, submit your translational plant research to one of our journals (PLOS Biology, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS ONE are the most relevant) and make sure that the people who need to read it can! ..."