Designing Crops for Global Food Security

全球粮食安全是21世纪最大的挑战之一。为了养活一个快速增长的世界，农民在接下来的50年里需要种植的粮食比人类出现以来累积的粮食还要多。 将粮食产量提高到这一水平是一项艰巨的挑战。这将需要变革性的作物发展技术，这样育种人员就可以“设计”作物，而不是像农民在过去1万年里所做的那样，只选择所需的性状，如产量、抗病和抗逆性。 尽管科学家们二十年来一直在组装指导手册--DNA序列--但他们还不能创造出“按计划种植的作物”。 萨斯喀彻温大学的表型和成像研究中心与国内和国际合作伙伴合作，将从根本上改变植物育种过程，并使开发具有特定所需特征的新品种成为可能--所有这些都以以前无法想象的速度和规模进行。在全球粮食安全研究所的领导下，该研究团队将利用该大学在作物开发、成像技术和高性能计算方面的国际知名优势。通过一种革命性的“按设计”方法，该团队的创新将改变植物育种。 农业和营养科学家的多学科团队将与计算机科学家、工程师和成像技术专家合作，利用强大的计算信息学和加拿大唯一的同步加速器和萨斯喀彻温大学的其他成像设施，创建植物表型(农业性状)的数字表示。 然后，数据分析专家将把这些表型与指定重要作物性状的特定基因(DNA序列)联系起来。其目标是通过可搜索的数据库将不断扩大的DNA数据与特定的、所需的性状联系起来，实现植物育种的数字化，以提高产量、营养特性、可持续性和作物保护。有了这样的资源，任何地方的植物育种者都可以通过互联网获得所需的所有信息，以设计出适合其地理区域的植物，以改善作物表现，即使是在发展中国家也是如此。 这一突破性的科学不仅将改变我们生产粮食的能力，还将导致涉及现场和航空传感器(无人机)、卫星成像和大数据分析的商业衍生产品。它还将导致开发获取地下数据的新技术。利用大学和合作机构的法律、政策和经济专业知识，该团队还将制定政策和战略，鼓励世界各地的生产商采用新技术。 到2022年，该大学的表型和成像研究中心将成为世界各地植物育种者的独特资源，支持加拿大的农业部门，促进国际伙伴关系，并改善全球粮食安全。

Global food security is one of the 21st century’s biggest challenges. To feed a rapidly growing world, farmers will need to grow more food over the next 50 years than has cumulatively been grown since humankind emerged. Boosting food production to this level is a daunting challenge. It will require transformative crop-development techniques, so that breeders can “design” crops, rather than only select for desired traits such as yield, disease resistance, and stress tolerance, as farmers have done for the past 10,000 years. Even though scientists have been assembling the instruction manual—the DNA sequences—for two decades, they cannot yet create “crops by design.” Working with national and international partners, the University of Saskatchewan’s Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre will fundamentally change the plant-breeding process, and make it possible to develop new varieties with specific desired traits—all at a previously unimaginable speed and scale. Led by the Global Institute for Food Security, the research team will build on the university’s internationally renowned strengths in crop development, imaging technology and high-performance computing. Through a revolutionary “by-design” approach, the team’s innovations will transform plant-breeding. Multidisciplinary teams of agricultural and nutritional scientists will collaborate with computer scientists, engineers and imaging technologists to use powerful computational informatics and Canada’s only synchrotron and other University of Saskatchewan imaging facilities, to create digital representations of plant phenotypes (agricultural traits). Data analytics experts will then link these phenotypes to specific genes (DNA sequences) specifying important crop traits. The goal is to digitize plant-breeding through searchable databases that link expanding DNA data with specific, desired traits to improve yields, nutritional properties, sustainability and crop protection. With such a resource, a plant breeder anywhere with internet access could get all the information they need to design a plant suited to their geographic region to improve crop performance, even in the developing world. This breakthrough science will not only transform our capacity to produce food, but will also lead to commercial spin-offs involving field and aerial sensors (drones), satellite imaging, and big data analytics. It will also lead to developing new technology for acquiring below-ground data. Drawing on legal, policy and economic expertise at the university, and at partnering institutions, the team will also develop policies and strategies to encourage producers around the world to take up the new technologies. By 2022, the university’s Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre will be a unique resource for plant breeders around the world, bolstering Canada’s agricultural sector, fostering international partnerships, and improving global food security.