earticle

영어

Over the past several decades, the food crisis theory for humans has been announced in various circumstances. This is because not only food for people but also food for livestock must be considered. We will have 10 billion people and 100 billion livestock on Earth in 2050, and to feed them, we need to produce 170% of the current production. Due to the increase in CO2 level and global warming, the temperature will rise by 1.5 degrees by 2050, and plant pests and diseases will become more prevalent. As land desertification continuously occurs, the cultivated area will decrease, and the water supply will become insufficient for field activity and drinking. So we are in a dire situation where food production is expected to decline. In particular, drought has been prominent in South America and Africa recently, and the decrease in production in these areas significantly impacts global food security. Therefore, developing crops with high production and drought-tolerant traits is urgent. Recently, major crops with drought tolerance have been developed as GMOs and commercialized, and they are being stacked with already developed GMO traits such as herbicide and pest tolerance. However, the problem with GMOs is that the development cost until commercialization is too high and the total period from seed to sale is about twice that of ordinary crops. In addition, public concern against GMOs is still present, and social harmony has yet to be achieved, so most GMOs are used for livestock feed or processing, not for direct food. In comparison, the development of genome-edited crops is similar in cost and period to the development of ordinary varieties. The advantage is that the desired genetic resources can be precisely created, and unlike GMOs, social harmony with the public sector is possible. Only three gene-edited crops (high-oleic acid soybeans, GABA tomatoes, and non-bitter mustard) have been commercialized globally, so there is a long way to go. ToolGen is developing several drought-tolerant crops using genome-edited technology, and pepper is a recent success story. I would like to present a talk focusing on drought-tolerant pepper.