OVERVIEWING SUPERCHARGED FOOD CROPS IN TURKIYE PERSPECTIVES: A WAY FORWARD TO FOOD SECURITY

Abstract

Food and nutritional insecurity, skyrocketing human populace, climate change and stagnate productivity of strategic food crops have emerged as prime challenges of this century. In order to attain UNDP sustainable goal of food security and zero hunger, there is dire need to improve the productivity and nutritional quality of food crops without immense increment in farm input utilization. The supercharged food crops (SFCs) (genetically modified plants entailing potential to grow significantly faster than conventional plants) might contribute produce greater economic yields. Numerous mechanisms such as improvement in photosynthetic efficiency, non-photochemical quenching, imparting C4 life cycle in C3 cereals and enhancing harvest index, are being put into practice for producing SFCs. An amalgamation of genetic engineering and synthetic biology approaches might produce desirable traits. However, future research efforts need to address multiple challenges such as plants traits governed by multiple genes and having little correlation with photosynthesis along with transgenic plants switching back to original physiological pathways.