These opportunities come at an important time. The global population continues to grow, having topped 8 billion in 2022 and forecast to reach over 10 billion by the 2080s.1 The growing population will lead to a 30 to 62 per cent increase in food demand by 2050 compared with 2010.2 Clearly, agricultural yields must increase, and distribution improve, to ensure adequate nutrition for all.
Scientifically informed policies to change global diets, including major decreases in red-meat consumption (as suggested in the planetary health diet), can help to improve environmental and food-system sustainability. Agricultural practices can be improved both to reduce their impacts and to become more resilient against stressors like extreme weather. Genetic-engineering technologies such as CRISPR, along with more traditional breeding practices, are being used to enhance crops and livestock, both in their nutritional value and their environmental resilience.
AI is emerging as a key technology for managing complex systems such as farms and soils. These advances in AI will be complemented by the development of smaller and cheaper in situ sensors, as well as remote sensors, to closely monitor farms. Approaches in nanotechnology can have applications in agriculture, improving soil quality through nano-engineered additives, for example.3 This will be vital in mitigating the effects of environmental crises such as climate change and ecosystem degradation. This is particularly important because, in many cases, agriculture already operates with unsustainable practices the impact of which will only be increased by the impending environmental issues.
On top of these problems is the issue of food quality. Here again, science and technology breakthroughs can help. We know that even in countries where people have access to sufficient calories, diets are often nutritionally suboptimal and must be improved if we are to avoid perpetuating significant health problems. According to the Global Burden of Disease report 2020, 22 per cent of all adult deaths in 2017 were associated with poor diet, with cardiovascular disease as the leading diet-associated cause of death.4 Type-2 diabetes, also associated with poor diet, was the ninth leading cause of premature death globally in 2017. This is particularly troubling because the situation is getting worse: in 1990, type-2 diabetes was only the 18th leading cause of premature death. Ongoing improvements in the methodology of nutritional studies will help to uncover causal mechanisms behind healthcare problems, however, and to create strategies for optimising and personalising nutrition to take into account the highly individual nature of physiological responses to different types of diet. Science-led personalised nutrition is set to be increasingly important, at least in countries with the infrastructure to support it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Bioengineering can bring more, new and better food to the global market. Engineering crops and livestock will be vital as we face the growing nutritional requirements of the large future global population. Reformatting the ecosystem involved in food production is also an option. Possible strategies include consideration of pollinators, soil quality (including the soil microbiome) and the use of chemicals and biotechnology for improving yield and reducing the impact of weeds and pests. On top of this, suitably directed research will enable a reworking of the long-standing traditional processes and practices of agriculture. Reimagining farming will help to dramatically increase food production. Technologies such as AI-led decision-making and vertical farming are examples of potential paths forward here. As well as increased food quantity, there needs to be consideration of food quality, with a view to giving individuals more opportunities to personalise their nutrition and creating foods with higher nutritional value generally. Optimising nutrition in this way could have profound impacts on personal health and significantly reduce the expenditure on healthcare provision in societies that have generally been impacted by widespread prevalence of diet-related health problems such as cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes.
Three fundamental questions guide GESDA’s mission and drive its work: Who are we, as humans? How can we all live together? How can we ensure the well-being of humankind and the sustainable future of our planet? We asked researchers from the field to anticipate what impact future breakthroughs could have on each of these dimensions. This wheel summarises their opinions when considering each of these questions, with a higher score indicating high anticipated impact, and vice versa.
Biofortification, where conventional plant-breeding or modern biotechnology techniques bolster the amount of iron and other essential minerals and vitamins on offer, is an increasingly promising option.6 Although the factors influencing both the nutrient content of crops and the scale of their absorption by human bodies remain incompletely understood,7 many successes in biofortification have already been achieved through conventional breeding, and the potential of genetic-engineering technologies (gene stacking, where two or more novel and useful genes are introduced into a single plant line, is one example) remains largely untapped.8
Genetic engineering can also boost crop yields, for example by re-engineering photosynthesis to boost energy capture.9 This can be coupled with improved crop resilience to help cope with droughts,10 pests and disease, which together account for 43 per cent of global crop loss.11,12 Domestication of resilient wild species13 could increase agricultural resilience to changing environmental conditions.14 RNA sprays, which deliver RNA-based vaccines against diseases to crops, have considerable potential for improving resilience against pathogens.15
Engineering the plant bacterial microbiome can enhance crop production and resilience.16 That is especially true for the rhizosphere microbiome associated with plant roots, which can help crops resist disease.17 There is also similar potential to engineer livestock. Already, researchers have used genetic engineering to develop fast-growing AquAdvantage salmon (which has been commercialised), pigs resistant to viral infections and dairy cattle resistant to mastitis.18
The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:
This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.
Research is increasing the specificity of pesticides, reducing unintended effects on non-target organisms and thus mitigating harm to crucial parts of the food chain and natural pest controls. Alternatives to pesticides, such as RNA sprays, are in development.23 There is also growing attention being paid to gene drives. These are heritable edits to the genes of a specific organism that will spread through a population when the edited organisms are released into the ecosystem. They can be used to render populations incapable of spreading disease or to control the reproduction of invasive species,24 although further research is required to avoid unintended consequences.25
Novel means of enhancing soils with nutrients, such as the addition of biochar (a charcoal-like substance made from anaerobic burning of organic material), are being explored.26 Understanding the soil microbiome, including competition among microbes, is key.27 Conserving or restoring the soil microbiome is also important, and has been shown to accelerate plant biomass production by more than 60 per cent, making it a priority task.28 Knowledge gaps in the role of cropping systems in soil health remain,29,30 but improving understanding of fundamental ecosystem properties, especially feedback mechanisms and complex interactions, should help close them.
The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:
This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.
One involves incorporating automation, AI and other novel technologies into traditional forms of agriculture.31 For example, tools like deep learning can accurately identify the presence of weeds and signs of disease from drone footage, enabling targeted intervention32 and decreasing unnecessary pesticide use.33 Similarly, engineered plant nanosensors and portable Raman spectroscopy could potentially detect stresses and track the health of crops and soil.34
Such high-tech approaches to traditional farming can be complemented by the use of agro-ecological tools35 such as microbe-based bespoke fertilisers,36 evidence-based crop choice and rotations.
Precision fermentation with engineered microorganisms can provide nutrient sources and improvers for food products such as cultured meat, improving texture and palatability and helping move towards viable large-scale production.37 Microbes and enzymes are already being used as factories that produce fats and proteins for nutrition products.38
The controlled release and targeted delivery of fertiliser ingredients manufactured at the nanoscale may also improve sustainability by ensuring more efficient use of nutrients.39 Combining these approaches with “climate-smart agriculture”, an acknowledgement of the need to take changing climatic conditions and their increasing variability into account,40 will be especially important in developing economies, where farms often lack resilience.41
Vertical farming, in which crops are grown indoors, close to population centres and under artificial light, could have a number of significant benefits. These include reduced food miles, reduced water use (watering systems are closed) and cuts in chemical pollution from fertilisers.42 Making vertical farming economically viable remains challenging, however.43
The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:
This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.
Scientists are now making progress in shaping the requirements of personalised nutrition. Gaining such insights involves monitoring individual responses to particular foods — including considerations of the age at which they are introduced and of the role of the individual’s gut microbiome. This has already shown potential to aid the development of a number of important health measures, such as tools for preventing the onset of obesity or food addiction.45
A key challenge is to understand the interactions between diet and the gut microbiome.46 Physiologists have learned that the gut and brain are strongly connected, interacting through links dubbed the “gut-brain axis”.47 Alterations to diet can impact the microbiome,48 with knock-on effects for multiple bodily systems including the immune system and even mental health.49 People’s individual gut flora differ significantly, so understanding the microbiome is key to personalising nutrition.50
The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:
This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.
