TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT SUMMIT - Unido

68 Technology Foresight Summit
related causes. Over 800 million people in the world are undernourished, and
a larger number suffer from malnutrition, meaning that they are qualitatively
undernourished. People in developing countries do not only need food, they
also need food with an enhanced nutritional value to sustain a healthy life.
The need to increase food production raises questions about both the
sustainability and environmental consequences of current production systems.
Over the years it became clear that industrial agriculture practices have
adverse environmental effects such as desertification, soil erosion, salinization,
fertilizers and pesticides contamination, decreased water availability,
eutrophication, and decreased genetic diversity. Although present agriculture
can produce enough food to feed today’s population and probably the projected
8 to 9 billion people in 2040, that achievement will come at the cost
of an unacceptable impact on the environment.
Plant technology developments must be redirected to meet the food quality
and quantity needs of the poor. Research should tackle key problems of
developing countries such as drought, soil erosion and salinity. If these priorities
are addressed, it will be possible to obtain crop varieties that fit specific
ecological niches without requiring expensive and polluting inputs. We
will see a rapid progress in the construction of high yielding varieties for local
staple crops of the southern hemisphere. These varieties can be tailored to
meet the nutritional needs of the population.
In this way, plant biotechnology will be essential for the development
of a sustainable industry, the creation of a medicare affordable by third world
countries, which soon will represent 85 per cent of the world population
and for engineering solutions for our present and future environmental pollution
problems.
The Green Genome Era: Central European Perspective
Dénes Dudits, Director General, Biological Research Centre, Szeged,
Hungary
Dramatic changes in political and economic situation in the Central European
countries have considerably influenced the position of agriculture and the
living conditions of large population of farmers. It became obvious that the
highly intensive crop production has lost its economic background and the
consideration of environmental issues became a central concern. The overdose
of fertilizers and plant protection chemicals could no longer be used to
insure a high yield. The complete restructure of the market situation, especially
the loss of the former Soviet Union as a major consumer, have forced
the agricultural players to rely on the European market with increased quality
requirements. Parallel with the narrowing market opportunities, extreme
climatic conditions such as flooding and severe drought caused significant loss
in crop production in recent years. Under these conditions the performance
of the cultivars and the usefulness of genetic resources have gained high priority.
Fortunately in the case of several crop species, the plant cultivating