On May 24, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) formulated its Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research and Innovation Strategy 2022. The strategy presents the direction of future research and development under the themes of realizing sustainable and healthy food, contributing to carbon neutrality and resource recycling, and early implementation of smart agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Moving forward, the Ministry will promote the research and development outlined in the strategy, as well as its applications in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and human resource development.
The 2022 Strategy tackles "sustainable and healthy food" to address the growing public awareness of food and health issues triggered by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), "carbon neutral resource recycling" to address the accelerating trend in global decarbonization and resource recycling in response to consumption that exceeds the planetary limits of Earth, and "smart agriculture, forestry, and fisheries" to solve local issues and enrich people's lives through the use of digital technology, amid the emergence of procurement risks for food and other resources.
Greenhouse gas emissions from the food system account for about one-third of the world's total emissions, so it is imperative that food be healthy while and at the same time being sustainable as well as reducing its environmental impact. Moreover, with rising international prices for food and an increasing uncertainty in the procurement of materials, there is an urgent need to develop a production system that will ensure a stable supply of food. At the same time, medical and nursing care costs will increase as the birthrate in Japan declines and the population ages, and food plays a major role in preventing disease.
By integrating production systems with production methods with low environmental impacts that realize advanced functionality, such as zero-emission greenhouses, and the development of highly productive and functional crops, MAFF seeks to build a production system that achieves both sustainability and high health functionality. MAFF will collect evidence while actively incorporating human intervention studies and improving the method for easily and accurately understanding actual dietary intakes in order to identify the relationship between various types of food and dietary patterns and health. In order to use a wide variety of food in personalized nutrition suggestion services, the Ministry will collect detailed nutritional and functional data and other evidence of health effects, including differences in the characteristics of different food varieties and production conditions to promote the creation of an environment that will enable their use in food design for health in all generations and regions.
From the viewpoint of building a recycling-oriented society and ensuring food security, MAFF will develop and put into practical use technologies for collecting and using fertilizer raw materials by recycling resources and a Village Energy Management System (VEMS) for rural areas to expand domestic procurement of basic materials such as phosphorus and other fertilizers and energy, which are indispensable for domestic production but dependent on overseas suppliers.
The strategy will also strengthen and enhance various elements of breeding efficiency technology that uses AI and other technologies that have been developed to date, and build and demonstrate a national breeding infrastructure (smart breeding infrastructure) that can be called a cross-crop breeding highway in order to dramatically increase the ability to develop varieties under the mobilization of Japanese breeding capabilities, such as experimental research institutes, universities, and private breeding companies.
Mr. Toyohisa Aoyama, Director-General for Technology Policy Coordination and head of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Council of MAFF commented, "There is no technological development that is better than variety. Based on our experience and intuition, we have crossbred about 30 varieties to create 40,000 to 60,000 individuals for selection. By building a breeding highway, we can reduce the crossbreeding of varieties by a factor of 20 to 30 and cut the breeding time in half."
This article has been translated by JST with permission from The Science News Ltd.(https://sci-news.co.jp/). Unauthorized reproduction of the article and photographs is prohibited.