Sunlight plant engineering isn’t answer says GM Freeze

American researchers have discovered a new process which adjusts the way staple crops turn sunlight into energy, potentially feeding hundreds of millions more people reports the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Crops such as rice, wheat and soybeans, as well as fruits and vegetables have a naturally occurring "glitch" in the way they photosynthesize that causes the plants to use up energy and resources, drastically suppressing productivity.

"The annual loss in production from wheat and soybean in Midwestern United States" Paul South, a molecular biologist and lead author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Scientists from the University of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service changed how tobacco plants with the same glitch process sunlight, inserting genes from bacteria, green algae and other plants. They published their work in the journal Science.

However, Liz O’Neill director of Sustain member GM Freeze doesn’t think that more plant engineering techniques are the solution to food poverty:

“Nobody is malnourished because photosynthesis is in some way flawed, they are malnourished because they are poor and do not have the power to manage the way that food is grown and distributed. Meanwhile, a third of the world’s food is lost or thrown away each year. If we want to really address hunger we need to focus on the causes of poverty and food waste, not headline grabbing technofixes.”