Can returning crops to their wild states help feed the world?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216140743.htm

"Can Returning Crops to Their Wild States Help Feed the World?" ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 Dec. 2014. Web.

The world’s population is expected to reach nine billion by the year 2050.  To feed the growing population, finding ways tot produce more food on less farmland, without causing additional harm to the remaining natural habitat is necessary.  One possibility is intensifying agriculture sustainably by fixing weaknesses that have sprung up accidently in the process of traditional crop breeding over a thousand years.  Michael G. Palmgren from the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues suggest that the most efficient way to regain those properties is by reinserting good genes back into the crops after isolating them from related plants or using precision methods to repair faulty genes.  Once the genes that have been mutated accidently are identified, the wild-type properties can be reinstated.  There is one problem with this breeding.  Crops restored to a more natural state would be classified as a genetically modified organism (GMO).  If the crops are named as GM products, they may face challenges in the market.  Palmgren says that, “the plants we eat and depend on are not the same as those originally found in the wild, whether they’ve ben genetically modified or not.”

This article relates to our Term 2 curriculum because it deals with genetically modified organisms.  GMOs are plants or animals that have undergone a process where their genes are altered with DNA from different organisms, bacteria, or viruses to get desired traits.  One pro of genetically modified crops is that they can produce a larger yield of food.  Genetically modified crops can pose as a solution to feeding the growing population.  In class, we also learned about the controversy of GMOs in the world.  We learned that genes are inserted to get the desired traits, which directly relates to this article.