Seed science in the 21 st century. Its role in emerging economies.

BENECH-ARNOLD R.L.

Conferencia; 10 th Conference of the INternational Society for Seed Science; 2011

ISSS

SEED SCIENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY AND ITS ROLE IN EMERGING ECONOMIES. Roberto Benech Arnold. IFEVA - Cultivos Industriales, CONICET/UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and other countries) are expected to have a major role in the global economy during the 21 st century. Some of these countries have exceptional soil and climate characteristics that determine evident advantages for food production. These features, combined with a rapid adoption of technologies generated by central economies (i.e. transgenic crops and others), have been instrumental for fast expansion of agricultural production in recent years. For such reasons, some of these economies are strongly based on food commodities production (agriculture represents 18.3, 12.6, 9.4 and 8.1 % of the Gross Domestic Product for India, China, Argentina and Brazil, respectively) and have a great share in global food production. Despite the mentioned characteristics that make agricultural activity so efficient in these countries, generation of new technologies in order to guarantee the systems´ sustainability and add value to agricultural production (by means of, for example, royalties or technologies generated with local criteria) still relies on research carried out in areas such as crop science, biotechnology, ecology, plant breeding and, of course, seed science. However, the amount of research carried out in these areas in these countries appears not to be in agreement with the importance that agricultural production has on their economies. For example, Argentina produces 16.20 % of the soybean produced in the world but only 2 % of the scientific literature related to this crop in its many aspects. China produces almost 20 % of maize in the world but only 3 % of the scientific literature related to this crop. This imbalance between the weight that agriculture production has on these economies and generation of knowledge in the related disciplines, threatens the sustainability of these economic models and, therefore, of global food production. Seed science, then, is called to play a major role in these emerging economies, through the different approaches (i.e. ecological, physiological, agronomical, etc.) that the discipline has to offer. Keywords: Upcoming economies, seed science, food production