ISU Crop Bioengineering Consortium: Activities and Strategies

The ISU Crop Bioengineering Consortium (CBC) was organized to address the urgent, grand challenge to provide sufficient food, feed, biofuels and biorenewable chemicals for the world’s burgeoning population, through basic and applied research, to enable the bioengineering of valuable traits in a variety of crops. Importantly, the novel technologies employed can produce bioengineered crops that contain no transgenes and thus may face less-stringent regulation than classic genetically modified organisms (GMOs). By 2050, the demand for staple food crops alone will require yield increases of nearly 80%. In addition, dwindling petroleum supplies, higher energy prices, dependence on energy imports, and the environmental consequences of fossil fuel use mandate development of renewable energy sources (including biofuels) and biorenewable chemicals. We need to increase food and biomass-crop productivity via both increased yield and expansion onto marginal lands. Historical yield increases have succeeded via improved management and intensive breeding, but we have begun to fall short of demand. Paradoxically, current crop varieties leverage only a fraction of the genetic potential available through natural and bioengineered alleles. Moreover, the discovery rate of potentially useful genes now clearly outstrips crop-testing capabilities. Therefore, technologies, as described here, that complement traditional management and breeding but dramatically accelerate production and testing of improved crops, are in critical demand. ISU Crop Bioengineering Consortium: Activities and Strategies