Global food production and climate change among other concerns are societal issues that require
major research input from crop science. While suggestions are abundant on how crop science can
help to resolve these issues many of the suggestions come from people who are not actually
familiar with the challenges and requirements to modify crop plants grown under field
conditions to achieve the necessary improvements. Efforts to alter a gene or even several genes
have very rarely proven successful in having impact on crop production under realistic field
conditions. This lack of success has not been addressed head on. This book serves as a reminder
to crop scientists and others that open clear-minded assessments of the entirety of evidence
concerning a hypothesis is required before making claims of possible increases in crop
performance. This attitude of skepticism is not a negative attitude but rather an employment of
the cornerstone of scientific investigation based on formation and evaluation of hypotheses.
Skeptical analyses are to be presented in the book on some of the common suggestions for
improving crop plants. The six specific topics to be addressed are photosynthesis seed number
nitrogen use efficiency water use efficiency crop water loss and unconfirmed field
observations. Each of the topics in this book will first be reviewed to present the origins of
the popular assumptions about how specific plant modification will result in improved crop
performance. The review of the background information will be followed by an examination of the
evidence logic and predicted outcomes for the assumed benefits of the modifications. Finally
each chapter will offer novel alternate approaches to plant modification that have documented
support for positively impacting crop performance. The book will not be written in specialized
detail language but offer access for those with a wide range of interests in options for
increasing crop production in the future. The goal of the book is to provide information that
is useful to those with interests ranging from climatologist to food-oriented sociologists. Of
course the topics covered will be of direct interest to those studying plant sciences
particularly crop scientists. The hope is to challenge a reader to re-examine some of her his
assumptions about crop improvement and approach the topic with a renewed practice of skepticism
in formulating and evaluating hypotheses.
