Beltrán José Pío, Cañas Luis A
CSIC-UPV, Institute for Plant Cell and Molecular Biology(IBMCP), Valencia, Spain.
Methods Mol Biol. 2018;1822:1-10. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-8633-0_1.
Humanity faces great challenges with respect to the use of energy, the production of food and feed, and the management of the Earth through sustainable practices. Agriculture can play a key role to give appropriate responses to these challenges. By the end of this century, human population will grow up to around 10,000 million people, meaning we must be able to produce food and feed for more than an additional number of 3300 million people. Legumes together with cereals have been combined to produce healthy food along the history of agriculture in all geographical areas of the planet. However, recently, the use of legumes, mainly in the developed countries, has been neglected therefore compromising human health and sustainable production of food and feed. Agronomy has always been driven by technology and innovation. The development of genomic tools in legume model systems such as Medicago truncatula will allow to make progress into the knowledge of critical processes of legumes biology such as nitrogen fixation, including the mechanisms controlling nodulation through soil nitrogen sensing, drought and flooding tolerances or the understanding of key factors governing the vegetative development of legumes, the control of inflorescences architecture or floral transition, and fruit set and seed development and composition. Traditional breeding combined with genome editing techniques will drive the production of grain and forage legume varieties for the future.
在能源利用、粮食和饲料生产以及通过可持续实践管理地球方面，人类面临着巨大挑战。农业可以发挥关键作用，以适当应对这些挑战。到本世纪末，全球人口将增长至约100亿，这意味着我们必须能够为另外超过33亿人口生产粮食和饲料。在全球所有地理区域的农业发展历程中，豆类一直与谷物结合，用于生产健康食品。然而，近来豆类的使用（主要在发达国家）受到忽视，从而危及人类健康以及粮食和饲料的可持续生产。农学一直由技术和创新驱动。诸如蒺藜苜蓿等豆类模式系统中基因组工具的发展，将有助于推动我们对豆类生物学关键过程的认识，如固氮作用，包括通过土壤氮素感应控制结瘤的机制、耐旱和耐涝能力，或者对控制豆类营养生长、花序结构或花期转换以及坐果和种子发育及成分的关键因素的理解。传统育种与基因组编辑技术相结合，将推动未来谷物和饲用豆类品种的生产。
