Global Food Security, Reactive Use-By Labels, Origins of the Potato

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

On the day that the UK government launches a year long “food-to-Fork” review of food production in the UK, we present a food themed special edition. Global Food Security Maia Elliot is an analyst and writer for Global Food Security, who recently held a competition for young food researchers to present their work in a compelling way in less than 3 minutes. Maia and the winner, Claire Kanja of Rothamstead Research discuss with Adam the broader issues “Food Security” seeks to address, and also how best to communicate often esoteric specialized interest to a broader audience that includes food-consuming tax-payers. A Threat to Wheat Claire’s work is looking into a threat to world wheat harvests known as Fusarium Head (or Ear) Blight. She is trying to categorize the proteins that the fungus uses firstly to evade Wheat’s defences, and then to kill the plant cells for its own food. Food Freshness Sensor Meanwhile, at Imperial College, Hannah Fisher reports on new work to make cheap-as-chips gas sensitive food labels that could detect levels of gases inside a food packet that indicate it is gone off or decayed. You could even read them with the NFC chip in most smartphones. The Origins and Adaptations of the European Potato Talking of chips, published this week is a genetic history of the cultivated European potato. Using DNA from museum specimens going back centuries, the authors describe a very complicated to-and-froing between continents that enables modern varieties to avoid certain blights and even to form decent sized potatoes when growing in different day-lengths. Sandy Knapp of the Natural History Museum in London was one of the authors. Presenter: Adam Rutherford Producer: Alex Mansfield

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0:45.0	Hello you, this is Inside Science from BBC Radio 4,
0:48.0	first broadcast on the 27th of June 2019.
0:51.0	I'm Adam Rutherford.
0:52.0	On the day of broadcast the government launched
0:54.2	its national food strategy to work out how the UK is going to continue to feed
0:59.1	itself in the forthcoming decades from as they say field to fork have you actually thought about where your food comes from this edition of inside science is a food special in a minute we're talking about the relationship between food farming the climate crisis and the whole concept of food security, which is one of the most important issues that humanity faces, but one which is often ignored.
1:21.0	And with some 30% of food in the UK being thrown away, we're looking
1:25.8	at new printed circuits that will help tell us when our food is really going off, molecular
1:30.7	best before dates. And in terms of thinking about where your food comes from
1:33.9	with slicing and dicing the evolutionary origin of an equatorial andae and tuba
1:38.6	salanum tubarosum which you better know as the potato. First though the earth warms and the climate crisis looms.
1:46.2	We often talk on this program about measurements of the rising oceans or collapsing ice sheets,
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