Page 316 - AWSAR 2.0

292 || AWSAR Awarded Popular Science Stories - 2019
Genome Editing in Rice-Ensuring Food Security
Mr. Andrew Peter Leon M.T.*
Email: mandrewt@gmail.com
Our beautiful earth, the only known planet in the entire universe to nurture life, has never been so troubled that it has to
feed at least four new human mouths every second. The population growth is burgeoning at such a rate that the Food and Agricultural Organization says we need to increase the food production by 70% before 2050. Meanwhile, agricultural scientists around the world are working tirelessly to achieve this hard, but not impossible, objective.
To achieve food security, that is, food is accessible to every single human being, we first need to increase food production by all means possible. The conventional wisdom may be insufficient due to the changing environment, reduction in cultivable land and evolving pests and diseases. Scientists are
working hard to overcome these issues by manipulating the behaviour of food crops to enable them to be smart, fast and strong by imparting “super-plant abilities”.
This feat has only been possible due to the knowledge we gained in the field of genetics ever since Gregor Johann Mendel, botanist, teacher, and Augustinian prelate, experimented with the humble garden pea plants. As Wikipedia defines it, genetics is the study of “genes, genetic variation and heredity in organisms”. As we know, genes are the regions of DNA that are responsible for the size, shape, colour or behaviour of every bacteria,abutterfly,acucumber,orus,human beings.
Every deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has four types of chemical compounds: A-adenine,
* Mr. Andrew Peter Leon M.T., PhD Scholar from Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu, is pursuing his research on “Genome Engineering for Development of Thermosensitive Genic Male Sterility in Rice - Suitable for two Line Super Hybrid Rice Production”. His popular science story entitled “Genome Editing in Rice-Ensuring Food Security” has been selected for AWSAR Award.