Engineering the Future of Food

Professor Pamela Ronald studies the genes that control resistance to disease and tolerance to environmental stress in plants, with the goal of improving food security globally. With enough rice to feed 30 million people lost to flooding every year, together with her collaborators, she has been instrumental in the development of rice that is both disease-resistant and flood-tolerant.

In this episode of the Create the Future podcast, we speak to Pamela about the 10,000-year-old history of modifying plants, from the early domestication of crops to recent developments in genomic editing. We explore why genetic modifications against environmental stressors will become more important as the climate changes, hear why engineered plants will help contribute towards chemical-free farming, and discuss the exciting future of perennial plants in biofuel production.

New episodes of ‘Create the Future: An Engineering Podcast’ every other Tuesday. www.qeprize.org/podcasts

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