How Plant Science is Advancing Sustainability in Agriculture

• Sustainability in Agriculture covers economic profits, environmental health, and social equity.
• Sustainable agriculture involves safeguarding humans, conserving natural resources, and improving the quality and quantity of profitable production throughout the food supply chain.
• Plant science aims to increase productivity with less inputs, chemicals, and water and more reliance on natural processes and onsite resources.
• Plant science also considers works on developing cultivars, treatments, inputs, and land management practices that do not harm the soil, water, air, or biodiversity.

New technologies, mechanization, and chemical use have changed and increased agricultural production. However, these changes resulted in several adverse environmental effects. People have also been affected by unsafe food, environmental health effects, and rural social conditions. It has become clear that sustainable agriculture is needed to address these issues. This article discusses the contributions plant science can make to achieve sustainability in agriculture.

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

Figure 1.: “Three dimensions to sustainable agriculture,” Bathaei & Štreimikienė, 2023. (Image credits: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13020241)

According to the “U.S. Code Title 7, Section 3103,” sustainable agriculture must have site-specific management that produces enough food to satisfy current human need for food, fuel, and fiber, relying as much as possible on renewable resources and natural processes. Non-renewable resource use should be efficient to keep their application minimal.

Sustainable agriculture also aims to meet the needs of the present generation without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to meet their needs. Therefore, management must give equal importance to short-term material gains and long-term conservation of natural and human resources.

As shown in Figure 1, sustainable agriculture, which includes both plant and animal production, is a combination of three goals- economic profits, environmental health, and social equity:

• Economic gains: The farms must be economically viable and profitable.
• Environment protection: Reduce negative ecological impacts. Instead, improve the quality of the environment and natural resource base used by agriculture.
• Social equity: Improve the working conditions of farmers and workers and consider improving their lives and society. Focus on producing safe and nutritious food for consumers.

Achieving sustainability in agriculture requires a multi-disciplinary approach and is the responsibility of stakeholders like researchers, retailers, consumers, policymakers, farmers, and workers. Each group makes unique and significant contributions towards sustainable agriculture.

Researchers rely extensively on plant science to promote sustainability in crop production.

Role of Plant Science

Plant science must protect the environment and people and ensure adequate food production and economic profits for the supply chain to make agriculture sustainable.

Increasing Production

The human population is expected to surpass nine billion by 2050, and we must produce 60% more food. However, necessary resources, such as land and water, to achieve this target are finite. Sustainable food production must increase yields using less inputs and fossil fuels. It is a daunting challenge, and plant science research is a key solution.

Several strategies are being used.

• Improve yield with available arable land to prevent further deforestation of primary forests.
• Enhance food quality, safety, and shelf life to prevent the 14% of harvests lost between farms and retailers and 17% wasted at retailers and consumers’ homes.

Plant scientists achieve these two goals by tackling several farm and postharvest supply chain challenges that reduce yield and food quality. These can be through one or more of the following methods:

• Plant breeding is used to develop new cultivars suited to extreme climates, changing temperatures, and drought conditions, as well as to resist pests etc.
• Optimizing agronomic practices, crop nutrition systems, irrigation methods and amounts, and tillage management can improve growing conditions in farms and orchards.
• Breeding new varieties using mechanical, cultural (rotation and intercropping), and biological approaches (integrated pest management) can reduce yield loss due to vegetative and root pests, diseases, and weeds.
• Climate-proofing agriculture is achieved by developing varieties adapted to increased heat and drought through optimal canopy and root systems, tillage, manure, and irrigation systems.
• Use plant breeding, physiology, and molecular biology to improve photosynthesis, abiotic stress tolerance, and plant water and nutrient use efficiency to maintain and increase yield for current and future generations.
• Focusing on postharvest handling, storage, packaging, transport, ripening, and retailing conditions can improve the quality and shelf life of grains and fresh produce, prevent food loss, and increase profits.
• Use precision agriculture methods to manage farms based on micro in-site differences to optimize resource use and increase ROI through variable-rate technology using data from farm soil, environment, and multispectral and hyperspectral imagery.
• Increase research on nutrition and quality of food to tackle malnutrition.
• Increase value addition of agricultural and horticultural products, especially in developing countries, to reduce food loss and waste and improve ROI.
• Working with nature rather than against it can increase profits and reduce risk. Onsite resources can be increased instead of chemicals, and crops can be diversified in space and time.

While many of these measures reduce negative environmental and health impacts, some strategies are focused on these targets.

Protecting the Environment and Global Health

The environmental impacts of conventional industrial agriculture are soil degradation, topsoil depletion, the pollution of water, soil, and air, emission of greenhouse gases, deforestation, and biomagnification, which have been threatening our ability to feed current and future populations. Conserving our natural resources is not just for protecting the environment and other species but also for ensuring sustainable food production for future human generations. Some measures being tested and applied are as follows:

• Developing crop plants adapted to local soil and climatic conditions.
• Protect and build agricultural biodiversity by diversifying cultivars and retaining heirlooms and heritage breeds. It can also improve yield and human health.
• Advance biodiversity by leaving buffers and habitats for pollinators and wildlife and replacing chemical treatments to eliminate biomagnification.
• Conserve energy use by reducing tillage, precision agriculture, renewable fuels or electricity in open fields, greenhouse, and indoor agriculture.
• Advance soil health and biodiversity to maintain and build soil fertility and productivity by replacing or reducing chemical fertilizers and treatments with biofertilizers, biostimulants, and growth regulators, reduced tillage, manure, and cover crops.

Some forms of sustainable agriculture that reduce environmental and health impacts are organic farming, eco-agriculture, and regenerative agriculture.

Achieving these goals involves several branches of plant science and associated science, such as morphology, anatomy, molecular biology, genetics, microbiology, pathology, physiology, biochemistry, entomology, ecology, environment protection, and physics.

Sustainability Goals

Plant science research helps in achieving objective and quantifiable goals set by the United Nations in 2015, called Sustainability Development Goals, as listed below:

SDG 2—Zero Hunger promotes sustainable agriculture, ends hunger and malnutrition, and achieves food security for future generations.

SDG 9- Industry, innovation, and infrastructure: Builds resilient and innovative supply chain technology and infrastructure that increases production in open and indoor agriculture and reduces food loss.

SDG 12—Responsible production: Plant science boosts sustainable and efficient natural resource use, reduces food loss in supply chains and farms, decreases the release of chemicals into air, water, and soil, and limits chemical impacts on people. It also increases materials recycling through composting onsite to reduce dependence on outside resources. It provides information to people to live in harmony with nature.

SDG 13- Climate action:  Plant science increases crop resilience and adaptation to climate change. Suggest adaptation and mitigation measures to reduce contribution to climate change.

SDG 14- Life below water: Plant science protects aquatic life by reducing water pollution by helping to reduce chemical use and increasing fertilizer use efficiency.

SDG 15- Life on land: Protects, restores, and encourages sustainable use of terrestrial resources, halting and reversing biodiversity loss and land degradation. Increases pollinator and wildlife diversity.

Innovative Technology

Scientists need innovative technology to help them with increased research themes and new data to improve sustainability in agriculture. CID Bio-Science Inc. is a company that has been supporting plant science research with the following precision tools:

• The CI-202 Portable Laser Leaf Area Meter and the CI-203 Handheld Laser Leaf Area Meter are for morphological studies, increasing yield, controlling pests, etc.
• CI-110 Plant Canopy imager for yield, nutrition, and irrigation optimization.
• Minirhizotron CI-600 In-Situ Root Imager or CI-602 Narrow Gauge Root Imager provides information on underground plant root morphology and dynamics.
• CI-340 Handheld Photosynthesis System is used to study physiological processes like photosynthesis, transpiration, stomatal conductance, respiration, and chlorophyll fluorescence to study productivity, stress, drought adaptation, etc.
• CI-710s SpectraVue Leaf Spectrometer helps monitor stress, crop health, etc.

The firm has been operating for thirty years, supplies over 500 research organizations, and has been mentioned in more than 2300 publications. Precision, non-destructive tools with built-in analysis software are suitable for real-time measurements in the field or laboratory, helping scientists achieve sustainability in agriculture.

Source

Bathaei, A.; Štreimikienė, D. A. (2023). Systematic Review of Agricultural Sustainability Indicators. Agriculture 2023, 13, 241. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13020241

 

Brodt, S., Six, J., Feenstra, G., Ingels, C. & Campbell, D. (2011) Sustainable Agriculture. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):1

 

FAO. (n.d.). Nutrition. Retrieved from https://www.fao.org/nutrition/capacity-development/food-loss-and-waste/en/

 

Reganold, J.P., Papendick, R.I., & Parr, J.F. (1990). Sustainable Agriculture. Sci. Am., 262, 112–120.

 

SARE. (2023). What is Sustainable Agriculture? Retrieved from https://www.sare.org/resources/what-is-sustainable-agriculture/

 

Sharma, M. (n.d.). Choose Plant Science For Sustainable Future- Issue 40. Retrieved from https://catalyst-magazine.org/articles/choose-plant-science-for-sustainable-future/

 

TNAU Agritech Portal. (n.d.). Steps to a Sustainable Agriculture. Retrieved from https://agritech.tnau.ac.in/sustainable_agri/susagri%20_%20Steps%20to%20a%20SA.html

 

1. (n.d.). The 17 Goals. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/goals