On 13 July 2020, the United Nations released the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 report, showing that 690 million people are still hungry worldwide, and 130 million more people may be hungry this year. In 2050, the food crisis that humanity needs to face may be even more serious, when the total human population can reach 10 billion.
As the world's largest food producer, China is committed to changing the way agriculture and animal husbandry are developed through new technologies and technologies, and to promote the food revolution. Interpreting the documentary series "The Extraordinary Future: The Story of Chinese Science You Don't Know" produced by China Studio, the fifth episode of "Food for Heaven" aired on Youku Video today, tells the story of three Chinese scientists who rise to the challenges of food production in the 21st century.
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△ The Pilot Film for the Fifth Episode of "The Extraordinary Future: Chinese Science Stories You Don't Know"
The most remarkable achievement of Chinese scientists is to improve crop types through precise gene editing.
△ China is committed to the research and development of new technologies to change the way of agriculture and animal husbandry
"Genetic tools are revolutionary technologies that are rewriting our lives." Gao Caixia, a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, commented on her work, "If compared with these new gene editing tools now, gene editing can accelerate crop breeding because it can introduce precise DNA sequences into crop genes." ”
△ Biology researcher Gao Caixia
Today's gene editing tools can improve the nutritional value of food, extend the shelf life of food, and so on through gene editing. As a result, people can eat tomatoes with higher vitamin C, and the strawberries they buy will not break down quickly...
However, Gao Caixia's team is also concerned about some food waste caused by crop diseases, such as wheat powdery mildew, which plagues the world. Wheat fields affected by wheat powdery mildew generally reduce yields by about 10%, and individual plots even reach more than 50%.
Previously, the only means of targeting wheat powdery mildew was to spray a large number of fungicides, which would have a very adverse impact on the environment and people's health. Gao Caixia and her team decided to launch a project to use gene editing to improve wheat's disease resistance, completely writing the era of spraying fungicides to fight diseases into history. "There are endless possibilities, and the future is immeasurable." Gao Caixia was full of confidence.
△ Gao Caixia in the laboratory
Having said so many crops, what about the "meat eaters"?
As the world's largest pork consumer, China basically eats a pig every year. However, China's pig farming has not kept pace with existing demand, and pig farmers are gradually turning to big data science and artificial intelligence.
When it comes to pig farming, many people's first reaction is dirty and messy pigsty. Li Jialong, a science and technology engineer at Jingdong who aims to build a future pig farm, decided to carry out intelligent and customized upgrading of pig breeding plants.
△ Intelligent pig farm
To put it simply, through "pig face recognition" to associate the health information of each pig, it is truly recognized that "a thousand pigs and a thousand faces" is truly recognized, and each pig is given personalized and all-round care.
△ Inspection robot
"Based on the pig's face we recognized, I can adjust to how much it has eaten and drunk today, and how much it has eaten and how much water it has collected." With this data, we can also accurately control the amount of food it eats per day. ”
At present, this set of intelligent breeding strategies is exactly what China's agricultural development needs. On the one hand, it can reduce the cost of breeding by 50 billion to 100 billion yuan, and on the other hand, it can improve the quality of breeding, which is also what Li Jialong and his team want to do in the future.
△ Background monitoring of the data interface of the breeding pig
Over the next thirty years, humanity will need food production that will be the sum of the entire history of mankind in the past. In order to fill the belly of human beings in the future, Gong Huaqin, senior engineer of The San'an Plant Factory Research Institute of Zhongke, is at the forefront of agricultural production innovation and development.
△ Gong Huaqin in the laboratory
She broke the prejudice that people could only grow vegetables in the fields and moved the "vegetable fields" to the laboratory. By "customizing" different spectra and nutrients for different vegetables, she and her team are producing higher quality vegetables.
"Our farm has a total area of 10,000 square meters, and environmental factors such as light, nutrition, humidity, temperature and gas can be controlled to produce high-quality vegetables."
△ Vegetable planting plant
In addition to this, producing more crops with less space is also a direction of their research. Because China only accounts for seven percent of the world's arable land, but it has to feed one-fifth of the world's population.
"Currently, 1.8 tons of vegetables can be produced per day in this factory. This amount can supply the vegetable demand of 5,000 people. According to this output, we can imagine that if it is a 100-story high-rise building covering an area of 10,000 square meters, each floor uses this six-story module to grow vegetables, and the total vegetable production can meet the daily vegetable demand of 500,000 people. This technology can become an important part of china's agriculture in the future. ”