Field Engineering Technician

Creating New Food CropsSince the dawn of agriculture, mankind has turned wild weeds into domesticated crops, which have higher nutritional content, better taste, are easier to harvest, and have larger seeds.However, modern breeding of food crops has resulted in selection for traits like a stronger response to fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation, resulting in more fragile varieties that are dependent on high-input agricultural systems.Climate change, soil erosion, invasive species, and weeds have created strong pressure on these over-selected crops.This process of domestication was also slow and “blind”, with new traits randomly discovered and selected over decades if not centuries.Most of the world's crops come from a handful of “domestication events” in a few regions of the world, leaving plenty of possible domestication to be done.For now, new selection and breeding procedures of crops by agricultural firms have been focused on adding traits like water-stress resistance or pest and disease resistance to modern crops, with mixed results.The main issue is that a lot of these desirable traits identified in wild species are multigenic, created by many genes, often dozens or even hundreds of them, making genetic modification of cultivated crops close to impossible.Another option is emerging, called “de novo domestication”. The idea is that instead of taking high-yield modern crops and trying to make them as resistant as wild weeds, why not take already resistant wild weeds and make them as productive as modern crops?New Crops And New ProblemsCreating New Food SourcesThe traits desirable in a cultivated crop variety tend to be less complex, often directed by just one or a handful of genes. In addition, these genetic features are generally well understood.So, the de novo domestication approach has the potential to produce new types of crops that could display resistance to environmental shifts and good enough yield and characteristics as food.Especially when you take into account new tools like CRISPR, that allow for very specific and controlled gene editing, including adding and removing a gene, or editing specific bases of an existing gene. Considering that CRISPR is now being approved for gene therapies in humans, it is likely that the legal framework for CRISPR-edited crops will open up in many countries.The technical details of how it could be done can be found in scientific publications, for example, “ Future-Proofing Agriculture: De Novo Domestication for Sustainable and Resilient Crops ”.Getting Lost In The WeedsAn issue that arises by turning weeds into food crops is that, obviously, the new crops will be very similar to weeds. In the article “ De novo domestication: what about the weeds? ”, researchers at the University of Copenhagen looked at this question.In it, they admit that the traditional GMO approach to weed management (herbicide resistance) is unsustainable and causes too much pollution.Instead, they propose that robotic weeding technology could be boosted by genetic engineering to create a much more environmentally friendly weed management system.When Advanced Robotics Meet Advanced Gene EditingRobots Weeding FieldsThe de novo crops (and potentially, modified existing crop varieties as well) could be modified to make their identification easy for weeding robots.This could be a boon for farming robots, a topic we discussed in our article “ Investors Should Take Note: Robotics Is Taking Over Farming ”, where we presented a variety of weeding robots:Ecorobotix ’srobot combines machine vision with precision spraying to reduce by up to 95% the volume of pesticide and herbicide used.’srobot combines machine vision with precision spraying to reduce by up to 95% the volume of pesticide and herbicide used. Naio Technologies aims to remove herbicide from the field fully, with a 5-ton autonomous robot driving the field and shredding or uprooting the weeds with small blades

In pre-modern time, most of the economic activity was driven by the primary sector: farming, husbandry and other food production. With the industrial revolution, our economies have been increasingly driven by first industry, then services. This made the primary sector, while still responsible for the vital task of food production, increasingly invisible in terms of economics.A key factor was the mechanization of farming. In poor, under-developed regions like Africa, farming can be the livelihood of a majority of the population and is responsible for as much as 15% of GDP. In countries like the US, farming is less than 1% of GDP.Mechanization and industrial farming led to several trends, almost all of them detrimental to the environment:Expansion of massive monocultures over thousands of acres, instead of diversified ecosystems with hedges, multiples species, etc…Massive dependence on chemical fertilizers.Intensive use of pesticides and herbicides, leading to ecological damage and water pollution.Degradation of soils fertility from deep plowing, fertilizers, fungicide, and compaction under the weight of increasingly large tractors.Decline in biodiversity of crops, with just a handful of varieties representing often 80%-90% of total production.Lower nutritional value of the food produced.This is not sustainable. Bees’ population is threatened by “colony Collapse Disorder” , likely triggered by pesticides