According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), each hectare of land in Asia used for rice production provides food for 27 people, but that will have to almost double to support a minimum of 43 people by 2050!
So what is the solution? IRRI has received over $10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to modify the photosynthetic system in rice to the “turbo-charged” C4 photosynthesis found in plants like maize (Read about the project here). In this way they hope to make rice more photosynthetically efficient in its use of water and nutrients and thereby increase crop yields.
So how is this relevant to GrassPortal? Agricultural researchers will be able to use our system for a number of different purposes, perhaps the most important being the ability to search for wild species with desirable traits. For example, GrassPortal will allow users to find sister species to an important crop species (e.g. maize), map the distribution of these species, and see whether they occur in more arid environments than the domesticated crop and therefore harbour greater drought tolerance. GrassPortal will make this sort of "bio-prospecting" much easier than is currently possible because it will integrate phylogenetic, distribution, environmental and ecological data.
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