The potential impact of plant biotechnology on the Millennium Development Goals

Abstract

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are international development targets for the year 2015 that aim to achieve relative improvements in the standards of health, socioeconomic status and education in the world’s poorest countries. Many of the challenges addressed by the MDGs reflect the direct or indirect consequences of subsistence agriculture in the developing world, and hence, plant biotechnology has an important role to play in helping to achieve MDG targets. In this opinion article, we discuss each of the MDGs in turn, provide examples to show how plant biotechnology may be able to accelerate progress towards the stated MDG objectives, and offer our opinion on the likelihood of such technology being implemented. In combination with other strategies, plant biotechnology can make a contribution towards sustainable development in the future although the extent to which progress can be made in today’s political climate depends on how we deal with current barriers to adoption.

Research in our laboratory is supported by Ministry of Science and Innovation-MICINN, Spain (Grant BFU2007-61413); European Research Council Advanced Grant BIOFORCE; Center Consolider, MICINN, Spain; COST Action FA0804, Associated Unit CAVA and SmartCell, FP7 Integrated project.