July 5, 2013 — With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species   
   accounting for 80 percent of humanity's caloric intake, people need to tap   
   unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University   
   plant geneticist Susan    
   McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.   
      
   To keep pace with population growth and rising incomes around the world,   
   researchers estimate that food availability must double in the next 25 years.   
   The biodiversity stored in plant gene banks coupled with advances in genetics   
   and plant breeding may    
   hold the keys for meeting the demands of more food in the face of climate   
   change, soil degradation and water and land shortages, according to the paper.   
      
   "Gene banks hold hundreds of thousands of seeds and tissue culture materials   
   collected from farmer's fields and from wild, ancestral populations, providing   
   the raw material that plant breeders need to create crops of the future," said   
   McCouch.   
      
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130705121051.htm   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)