Professor Liam Dolan on Plants: vision of the future

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Professor Liam Dolan on Plants: vision of the future

02 Jun 2011

Speakers: Professor Liam Dolan

Professor Liam Dolan, Co-Director of the Plants for the 21st Century Institute at the Oxford Martin School, delivers a strong case for the manipulation of crop genes to alleviate global food security issues. Dolan accepts that the “GM” label is not a fashionable one, but he sees hostility to the technology as a result of a failure to communicate the benefits to the consumer. Dolan makes a great effort in his talk to address this miscommunication, and lays out the very real need to find solutions to feed an ever-increasing number of people that go hungry. Whilst there are other methods to increase yields and the resilience of crops, namely spraying them with chemicals, these are costly, inefficient, and have a negative environmental impact. In contrast, the work Dolan is doing to breed plants that, for example, grow longer root hairs to absorb more phosphate essential for growth, seem to have very tangible benefits and, h believes, can offer a compelling alternative.