London: After a long time, there is good news in research on wheat: British scientists, using genetic engineering, have developed a new variety of wheat that can yield 11% more than the current variety.
This development in agriculture is also significant because since the “Green Revolution” in 1950 and 1960, there has been no extraordinary success in increasing wheat production, while wheat production is growing at only one percent per annum. Is.
Attempts to increase wheat production by adopting various measures in the past have failed in practice: some efforts have resulted in an increase in the grain size of wheat but a decrease in the number of grains growing in each wheat plant; While some efforts were made to increase the number of grains in each wheat plant, each grain became smaller and weighed less.
The new wheat, developed under the leadership of Professor Simon McQueen Mason of York University, UK, has not only increased the size of the grains, but also maintained their number.
The research, published in a recent issue of the research journal New Phytologist, shows that this new variety of wheat has not only been developed but has also been tested in the fields.
In field trials, the average weight of new varieties of wheat was 12.3% higher than that of existing wheat, while the total yield of the whole crop was 11% higher.
Although not as great a revolution as Norman Borlaug’s “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, it is undoubtedly a significant achievement in the current context of the ever-increasing demand for food.