Print FriendlyPlant Biology
Our lives depend on plants' ability to harvest the sun's energy but the importance of plant biology is often overshadowed by medical research. Yet, securing the world's food supply in a changing climate may be one of the biggest challenges we face in this century. In fact, the human race consumed more corn, wheat and rice than it grew in six of the last eight years.
Worldwide fertilizer shortages, rising energy costs and an increasing demand for biofuels add to the current global food crisis. Understanding the molecular underpinnings of how plants adapt to challenging environments and defend themselves against insects and fungal infections will be crucial to ensure there will be sufficient food in the future, making basic plant research more important than ever.
The Plant Biology Initiative Will:
- Enable Salk scientists to understand how plants adapt to changing conditions in their habitat. This knowledge will allow growers to engineer crops that produce greater yields, have higher nutritional value and resist disease with less environmental impact.
- Help meet an increasing demand for renewable energy – not by diverting food crops for biofuel production – but by engineering non-food plants to produce biofuels and biodiesel.
- Enable scientists to understand how plants produce their arsenals of survival molecules so that those same chemicals can be put to work as natural antifungals that boost nutritional content of food crops.
Your Gifts to the Plant Biology Initiative Support:
- Expansion of current green house space and upgrades with high-end growth facilities to mimic real-life environmental fluctuations.
- Purchase new equipment for cell and developmental biology studies that enable Salk scientists to study live samples in unprecedented detail.
- Salary support and start-up packages for two new faculty members working in the areas of population genetics and chemical ecology to strengthen the existing intersections between metabolism research, systems and plant biology.
For information on how to contribute to this initiative, contact:
Rebecca Newman
Vice President, Development and Communications
858-453-4100 x1454
e-mail: rnewman@salk.edu.