11-8 IAN Feed World

 Genetic engineering to help feed the world in view of a changing world. I’m David Sparks for the Ag Information Network.  Thank goodness for all of those people who studied hard in their life and want to make a contribution Pankaj Jaiswal, a plant biologist at Oregon State University Is performing all kinds of research with a government grant. He is very much aware of the recent drought and potential for changing climactic conditions with a world that is exploding in terms of its population. I had a conversation with him. “In your research is there some practical or pragmatic outcome that we can, for example, since the environment seems to be changing with drought etc., is your research designed to perhaps manipulate the internal mechanisms of a plant so that it is better prepared to produce under drought conditions and cold conditions etc. Etc.? That is exactly the plan. Once we start accumulating the pieces of the puzzle together and put it in a database, then the plant breeders and the biologists can come with large data sets that are associated with those biochemicals or those genes and can do the expression data analysis using these interaction metrics that are being regulated or are responsible for contributions towards that response. That gives them some idea about where to look for or what needs to be altered or improved in terms of its mechanism and function and genetic makeup that is the goal.