All language subtitles for BBC.Botany.A.Blooming.History.3of3.Hidden.World.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

I've been fascinated by plants
for my entire life.

They are
nature's most innovative creation.

And yet, what is most surprising

is that almost all the plants
that we grow

have been altered in some way
by people.

For 10,000 years, humans have created
new plant varieties for food.

We used trial and error.

Then, 150 years ago,

a new era began.

Pioneer botanists used science
to breed plants,

and set out to discover
how plants passed unique qualities

from one generation to the next.

Botanists began to discover
how plants create
their astonishing variety.

They puzzled over the colour
of snapdragon petals...

and the strange patterns
in wild maize.

Some gave their lives
to protect valuable seeds.

And together
they unlocked the secrets of plants
for the benefit of us all.

The long quest to understand
the world of plants

would lead botanists to develop
a new tool - plant genetics.

Today, botany is at the forefront
of attempts to rescue a rising
world population from starvation

through the production
of new and improved varieties
of our staple crops.

Plants really are the most incredible
living things on earth,

sometimes simple, sometimes complex,
but always beautiful.

And what really blows me away
is the sheer variety.

Just as you think
you've seen everything,

you look at a new flower

and you see something
which you've never seen before.

The variety works
on so many different levels,

so you have trees, you have climbers,
you have herbs,

and then within the flowers
you've got the diversity of colours,
the diversity of shapes,

and then you find varieties
on a theme,

so you find members of the daisy
family, you find different scents,

so you have a plant there
that smells like it's a tin
of cherry-pie filling...

and all of this variety is there
to do the same thing,
which is to produce more plants.

And even within a group of plants
that are clearly the same species,

you get a variation of height
and of colour.

The diversity's endlessly wonderful.

How does this complexity of form
and function come about?

It's always fascinated me,

because variety among edible plants
has huge implications.

It's the key to producing more food.

To botanists in the 19th century,

how plants generated variation
was the greatest puzzle in science.

150 years ago, even the great
Charles Darwin described us as

profoundly ignorant of the mechanism
whereby this variety was generated.

As botanists began to unveil
the mechanism behind variation,

they laid the foundations
of plant genetics...

..genetics which showed botanists
how plant characteristics

are passed on from one generation
to the next.

It would give them the power
to tamper with the laws of nature

and the means to feed the world.

And yet the story of plant genetics
begins with something
we see around us every day...

..a concept so familiar,
it's easy to take for granted...

..inheritance.

If you look at any population
of plants or animals or people,

you notice that each individual
is different from the next.

Each is a unique combination
of the characteristics
inherited from their parents.

But how do these characteristics
get passed down
from generation to generation?

This is a question that has intrigued
the new wave of biologists
since Darwin.

The first pieces of the inheritance
puzzle will be put together
far away in the Czech Republic.

And the evidence is buried
in an obscure scientific paper,
published in 1866.

The first thing you notice
about this original copy is
it's not in English, it's in German.

Secondly, it's written by a monk,
and thirdly...

..it's about peas.

Gregor Mendel had been growing
varieties of pea plant

that had different characteristics,

like whether the peas were wrinkled
or smooth, yellow or green,

whether the stems were tall
or short...

Plant breeders had done that kind
of thing many times before.

What was extraordinary about Mendel
was he repeated the experiment again
and again and again.

And, even more critically, he wrote
down the numbers of each kind of
plant that he got in each generation.

Mendel treats plant breeding
as a science.

And he spots something very odd
in the numbers he's written down.

The ratio of tall plants to short,
or wrinkled to smooth,

is always the same.

Nobody had ever noticed this before.

These patterns hold vital clues
to understanding inheritance.

But for 35 years,
nobody in the scientific community
understands its significance.

In 1884, Mendel dies and his work
disappears into obscurity.

That is,
until the turn of the 20th century,

when Mendel would gain
his greatest champion...

..William Bateson.

Bateson's a Cambridge University
zoologist.

Plants fascinate him, but he's more
used to working with animals.

He wants to see if he can find the
same inheritance patterns in animals

as Mendel got with his peas.

This is William Bateson's makeshift
laboratory.

For years, he runs a series
of experiments wherever he can,

in his own garden,
even in a disused church.

This is because the authorities at
Cambridge University believe his work
on understanding inheritance

is incomprehensible
and therefore futile.

So his funding is pitiful.

Bateson's career at Cambridge
had started as manager
of the college kitchens,

hardly as promising sign
of future success in science.

But if you have to say one thing
about Bateson, he is tenacious.

He has an unshakeable belief that
he is on the verge of discovering
something of huge importance.

Wherever Bateson goes, the whiff
of animal droppings soon follows.

Ever since a colleague gave him
a copy of Mendel's paper,

Bateson's been hooked on inheritance.

He wants to know if the patterns
of inheritance Mendel got in peas

are the result
of a set of universal laws
across the whole of the living world.

And that includes plants.

His plan is to crossbreed
all kinds of different animals

and to do the same for plants,
a hugely laborious task.

Without a team of helpers
and no budget to pay for one,

it will be impossible.

But Bateson sees an opportunity
to tap into an underused workforce
on his doorstep...

the students
of Cambridge's Newnham College.

They are the perfect workforce,

fiercely intelligent, unemployed
and they're all female.

They become known
as Bateson's ladies.

Bateson and the ladies get cracking,

and they start by looking for
patterns of inheritance in chickens.

So this is the sort of experiment
they do.

They cross a black cockerel and a
black hen and get a brood of chicks.

But what intrigues them, surprises
them, is that not all of the chicks
are black.

Some of them are white.

And the more times they repeat
the experiment, the stranger it gets.

The ratio of black to white
is always 3-1.

Every time.

The parents must have passed down
some instruction

to cause this chick to be white
and these ones to be black.

Those elusive instructions
we now know as genes.

Genes are too small to be seen with
the technology Bateson and his ladies
had in their day.

Genetics was a different kind
of science.

Bateson and his ladies used
crossbreeding experiments and logic

to make sense
of the three-black-to-one-white ratio
in their chickens.

So, how can you get this 3-1 ratio?

Well, we know that both of
the parents contain the information
for black feathers

because they are both black.

But we also know that somewhere
hidden inside them there is
information for white feathers,

because between them
they can produce a white bird.

So there must be at least two sets
of information in each parent
for feather colour,

one black and one white.

So Bateson tries to work out
how those two pieces of information

could lead to the 3-1 ratio,
and this is how he did it.

Imagine that a chick gets information
for black feathers from its father

and information for black feathers
from its mother.

Or it could inherit black from dad
and white from mum,

or white from dad
and black from mum.

Or, finally, it could get information
for white feathers from both of them.

Bateson and his team
observe that breeding
from a pair of black chickens

always produces three black chicks
for every white chick.

To explain that observation, he has
to make one final logical assumption.

Bateson deduces that
the information for black feathers
overrides the information for white,

so in three of the chicks
you get black feathers.

One...two...three.

Only when the chick gets information
for white feathers
from both of its parents

and no instructions for black
feathers do you get a white chick.

And bingo! You have your 3-1,
three black, one white ratio.

If Bateson's explanation works for
chickens, what about other animals?

And why stop there?

He knows that it holds true for peas,
but what about other plants?

Perhaps every living thing
is governed
by the same laws of inheritance.

To find out, he'll need
to look beyond his chickens.

Bateson and his ladies breed pigeons,
goats, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice...

Wherever they look, they find
the same inheritance patterns
they found with their chickens,

the same
that Mendel found with his peas.

Everywhere, in every species,
the patterns are confirmed.

And Bateson is blown away because
he believes he has found the key

to the mechanism by which all living
creatures inherit the features
that make them them.

And the only way
the ratios can be explained

is if those features are passed down
from generation to generation

in discrete units of inheritance.

A new science is born.

Bateson gives it the name
by which we now know it...

genetics.

In a matter of years, Bateson
has turned from marginal eccentric

into international
scientific superstar.

He has proved that the strange
numbers Mendel first saw in peas

are the result
of a set of universal genetic laws.

These laws explain
how animal and plant characteristics

are inherited in past generations,

and the same laws can now be used
to predict how they will be inherited
in future generations of plants.

But in 1903, Bateson hits a problem.

There's a plant
lurking at the back of his laboratory

that doesn't seem to be playing
according to the rules.

It seems to defy everything
Bateson has learned about genetics.

The plant is snapdragon

and the problem
is the colour of its flowers.

From one generation to the next,

the inheritance of colours
seems utterly unpredictable.

New colours
seem to come out of nowhere.

Yellow...

crimson...

..magenta.

Bateson has to question if the laws
of genetics have reached their limit
with snapdragons.

So he puts one of the brightest
geneticists in his female team
on the case...

..Muriel Wheldale.

Wheldale has an uncommon gift
for making sense of complex patterns.

And she loves snapdragons.

Wheldale sets about her task
armed with state-of-the-art
genetic technology...

pencil, paper and lots of patience.

Wheldale has to do crossbreeding
experiments just like Mendel.

Wheldale takes the pollen
from one type of flower

and crossbreeds it with another plant
by dabbing the pollen
on its flowers...

..and grows new plants from the seed.

Then she has to count the number of
flowers of each colour that come up.

Then repeat...hundreds of times

with hundreds of plants.

It looks mind-numbing
and it is mind-numbing!

And this period of genetic research
was called
"the bean-counting period".

The trick was to remain focused
on solving the problem.

For four years
Wheldale sows and grows and counts...

until finally
she makes a breakthrough.

Wheldale works out that there are
several genes that influence
the colour of snapdragon flowers.

Every possible combination
of those genes
generates its own unique colour.

It's a simple secret code,

and Wheldale has cracked it.

Now she can predict the inheritance
of these colours...

..just like anything else in nature.

The colours of snapdragon flowers
may seem trivial and whimsical,

but they reveal something fundamental
to all of life on earth.

And the truth is perhaps shocking,

that the amazing biological diversity
that we see around us does not
require a supernatural explanation.

It is the result of genes working
together like the components
of a beautiful machine.

Bateson showed that Mendel's laws
of inheritance were true.

Wheldale proved that genetics
could predict the inheritance
of even the most complex features.

By 1913, botanists see genes
as a car-assembly line.

Genes are the components of machines,
ready to be assembled and exploited
by crossbreeding.

Out of the First World War
comes a new generation of botanists

who can see that the future
of genetics will change the world.

They want to put genetics
to practical use.

A 29-year-old Ukrainian called
Nikolai Vavilov is lucky to be alive.

He has narrowly avoided
falling to his death
in the mountains of Central Asia.

As far as Vavilov's concerned,

what's at stake
is well worth the risk.

He's the first botanist to understand
the true potential of genetics

to revolutionise agriculture.

Nikolai Vavilov is a plant breeder.

He is just back from an expedition
collecting plants
with valuable attributes.

He wants to cross them
to create a new generation of crops.

This is more than a passion
for Vavilov.

The fate of the nation is at stake

and he believes that plant genetics
can save the Soviet Union.

The Russian Revolution
has left agriculture in chaos.

The new Soviet Union
is unable to feed itself.

Nikolai Vavilov learned genetics
in Europe.

Many evenings spent deep
in discussion with William Bateson
in Cambridge

have sparked Vavilov's imagination.

Vavilov's plan is to crossbreed
the plants he collects

to create new combinations
of characteristics,

super crops for the Soviet Union.

Vavilov thinks that he can create
a revolutionary set of new crops,

assembling them
using the best components,

like cars on a production line.

And the expedition from which
he has just returned is the start.

Imagine being able to create a fruit
tree that can fight every disease

or a super wheat that combines
the yield of wheat from the plains

and the cold tolerance
of wheat from the mountains.

Vavilov realises
that plants with valuable properties
will not all be found in Russia.

To crossbreed his new generation
of crops,

Vavilov will need
to combine varieties collected
from right across the globe.

Little by little,
he gathers the seeds of every plant
he finds in a central vault.

He's the pioneer
of worldwide seed banks.

A seed is a survival capsule.

It contains not only the embryonic
plant, but also a food supply
and a tough outer coat.

It could almost have been designed
for the storage of genes.

Vavilov was a pioneer
in the movement to use seeds

as a way of preserving
our biological inheritance

for generations to come.

And there is now a worldwide movement
of seed banks

conserving not only our varieties
that we have already,

but also the wild relatives
of the crops
that we shall need in the future

to make plants to produce more and
more food in different conditions.

Vavilov's worldwide seed bank is
the first step in his bold strategy

to create super crops for the USSR.

Lenin buys into Vavilov's vision

and puts him in charge of the most
influential agricultural bodies
in the Soviet Union.

Vavilov is to be responsible
for a new scientific approach
to breeding crops.

Until now it has taken centuries
to breed plants with useful features,

but, armed with the new understanding
of genetics,
Vavilov can work much faster.

But even by Vavilov's most optimistic
estimates, the work will take years.

He was often heard to say,
"Life is short. We must hurry."

He couldn't possibly have known
how right he was.

By 1929, the USSR is
under the control of Joseph Stalin.

Stalin doesn't understand science.

He has no patience
for the likes of Vavilov.

He insists the USSR needs methods
to increase crop yields
that make a difference tomorrow,

not in ten years' time.

Stalin's men say genes do not exist.

Only the environment in which
a plant grows up is important.

It fits Marxist ideology beautifully.

Breeding and birthright
count for nothing.

Genetics, they say,
is bourgeois Western propaganda,

and slowly Soviet geneticists
realise that their science
is a political liability.

These are dangerous times.

At the age of 45,
Vavilov has invested decades
in his great genetic project.

Then disaster strikes.

A series of catastrophic harvests
hits the USSR.

Stalin is looking for a scapegoat.

Vavilov runs
several agricultural institutions.
He's the perfect target.

A summer evening in
the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine.

Vavilov collects plants.

On this occasion, though,
he is not alone.

Four men
disguised as local bureaucrats

have searched for him all day.

They are Stalin's secret police.

These are Nikolai Vavilov's
last moments of freedom.

On 26 January 1943,

Vavilov dies on the floor
of a prison cell.

The man who has devoted his life
to feeding the Soviet Union

succumbs finally to, of all things,
starvation,

and genetics in the Soviet Union
is put back decades.

World events now threaten
to wipe out Vavilov's global work
to develop genetics.

The Second World War...

it's the siege of Leningrad.

12 Russian scientists
who have worked with Vavilov

have been trapped in an underground
vault for the last three months.

German artillery
is pummelling the street outside,

yet the scientists trapped
inside the vault

believe they are protecting
the Soviet Union's greatest treasure.

They are guarding
Vavilov's seed bank,

a vast collection of seeds
from around the world,

brought together to crossbreed crops
for the future of all humankind.

If the war destroys this collection,
his life's work
will have been in vain.

It's almost impossible to imagine
what it must have been like for those
scientists trapped in that basement,

because not only
was there a battle raging above them
with the enemy trying to kill them,

but they were faced
with the horrendous dilemma
that they had no food.

They were desperately hungry,

yet they were surrounded
by edible seeds...

which they did not touch.

The seed bank remained intact.

And these scientists
sacrificed themselves
to preserve a genetic resource

that we can all benefit from
in future years.

Mendel, Bateson and Wheldale
first unveiled the universal laws
of genetics

that govern
all plant characteristics.

Vavilov tried
to put those laws to use,

to combine the properties of plants
from around the globe.

He thought he would trigger
a revolution in agriculture.

But Vavilov was stopped before
he could see his dream realised.

The global revolution
in food production
would fall to someone else.

One year after Vavilov's death,

an American plant breeder
called Norman Borlaug

is pacing his fields
in a remote research station
near Chapingo in Mexico.

Borlaug is
an ex-championship wrestler

who grew up
during the disastrous crop failures
of the Midwest Dust Bowl.

Maybe it was this
that fuelled his determination
to make agriculture work.

Now he is
a promising young plant breeder,

specialising in making plants
defend themselves against disease.

And he's brought his knowledge
to Mexico.

Poor soils and fungal disease
have held back farming in Mexico
for generations.

Borlaug is no lab geneticist,

he's a hands-in-the-soil
agriculturalist.

But the advances in plant genetics
by Bateson, Vavilov and others

have given him an understanding of
how to combine useful characteristics
through crossbreeding.

Borlaug has managed to crossbreed
different varieties of wheat

to increase disease resistance.

But his most robust variety
doesn't behave quite as he expects.

Borlaug's plants grow
too successfully.

The heads are beautiful,
plump, full of nutrition,

but the stems are growing like crazy
too,

and they're too tall
to support the heavy seed heads.

So in the slightest gust of wind,
they fall over.

The seeds hit the ground, they rot,

and that's a waste of time, effort
and food.

The solution
to Borlaug's falling wheat
comes out of the Second World War.

Japan is defeated by the Allies.

American troops
spread across the country.

The occupied territory
is a new resource to be exploited.

Like Vavilov before them,

the Americans know that foreign lands
hold new plants
with unfamiliar properties.

In a corner of Northeast Japan,

American botanists stumble across
a strain of wheat that seems
to have adapted to the local climate.

The discovery of this strain
changes Borlaug's fortunes,

and the fortunes
of world food production.

The strain is later named Norin 10.

I'm guessing
you haven't heard of Norin 10,

and compared to the other wheat
growing around the world at the time
of its discovery,

it wasn't much different,
apart from the fact
that it grew to half the height.

Now dwarf wheat
may not sound very revolutionary,

but it was about to trigger
the most seismic social change
in modern times.

Norin 10
is a natural genetic aberration.

It is a mutation.

In 1953, Borlaug sees
a practical application for
the insights of Bateson and Vavilov,

a way to use Norin 10
to produce a new plant

with just the characteristics
he needs.

Borlaug crosses
his top-heavy Mexican variety

with the stumpy Japanese variety...

and creates a short plant
with nutritious seed heads.

Let's see
what the advantage of that was.

If this weight simulates
a gust of wind,

then if we hang it
on this tall plant...

Ah! Broken.

On the other hand...

..if we hang the same weight
on the short plant...

..the stem doesn't break
and the plant doesn't fall over.

Small change for a plant,

giant leap for mankind.

Borlaug's wheat
sweeps across the world.

In 1966, he takes it
to the Indian subcontinent.

Since the successful introduction
of dwarf wheat,

India has not once experienced
a national famine.

Borlaug's extraordinary success
is given the name...

the green revolution.

The increased yields come at a cost.

Higher inputs of fertiliser
and water,

some people say
it's not sustainable for ever...

but it is clear that this dwarf wheat
is the most important plant mutation
in the history of civilisation,

because, armed with it, Norman
Borlaug took 1,000 million people
out of starvation.

In 1970, Borlaug was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize.

His work showed the immense impact of
plant genetics on humanity's ability
to produce food.

But like Bateson, Wheldale
and Vavilov before him,

Borlaug relied on endless
crossbreeding and observation
to create his new hybrids.

And there was an even more
fundamental limitation...

..Borlaug's success with dwarf wheat
was down to the exploitation
of a useful mutation

that had occurred by chance.

In the end, the green revolution
came down to nature's lucky mistake.

Plant breeders faced one big problem.

They had to rely on nature to provide
them with the raw materials,

that one-in-a-million useful mutation
that they could exploit.

What if they could cut out nature

and design,
engineer the plant they wanted,

one that could survive in a hostile
environment or resist a disease?

This is a monumental task,

because to do it
they have to control the genes.

The botanists' Holy Grail was a new
generation of crops made to order.

Crop breeders needed
precision control over plant genes.

A decade after the green revolution,

that control of genes remained
as elusive as it had always been.

What comes to mind
if I say "sweetcorn"?

Is it ranks of identical,
pale, yellow seeds,

like the ones
you buy at the greengrocer?

Now, this is wild corn.

And this is amazing!

This is really, really different.

This looks random.

Look at that!
Completely different again.

Almost flame-coloured,
looks like it's been burnt almost,
it's been cooked already.

It almost looks wrong.

Every one of these is different.

This one's almost getting towards
some of the seeds
that we get in corn on the cob.

This one, you just would never see
in the greengrocer's.

These ones, different again.
I've no idea what's inside this one.

It really is worse
than pass the parcel.

And there we've got...
we've got purple, we've got blue,

we've got dark purple...

Now, 50 years ago,
these crazy patterns in corn

set in motion a whole new way
of thinking about genetics.

In 1945, tucked away in a corner
of Long Island, New York,

you would have found a field of maize
that at first glance looks ordinary.

This is the stomping ground of
a brilliant botanist who would reveal
the inner workings of genes,

and so propel plant genetics
into the modern age.

Pacing up and down the rows
of plants, cigarette in holder,

is a woman with the kind of biceps
you only get from digging.

She trusts nobody else
to look after her maize plants,

so she does all of the farm work
herself.

She's not a farmer.

Her maize is not there
to feed anyone.

She's a geneticist.
Her name is Barbara McClintock.

McClintock is obsessed
with understanding

how plants pass their characteristics
down to the next generation...

..the same question that fascinated
Mendel, Bateson and Wheldale.

McClintock has noticed mutations
in her maize that behave
in totally unexpected ways.

SHOTS RING OUT

McClintock's only employee
is a human scarecrow

in the fields to shoot any birds
that threaten her plants,

because she cannot afford to lose
a single one.

Each is a rare,
one-in-a-billion chance mutation.

She suspects that her maize
is the key to something really odd
going on in plants.

McClintock is captivated by one
strange mutation in particular.

This pattern on the seeds.

It makes her suspect she might need
to rewrite the rules of genetics.

Day after day, through the seasons,

she puts transparent bags
over the female parts of the maize

to stop them being pollinated
by the wrong plant.

She puts paper bags
over the male parts from other plants
to collect their pollen.

McClintock does this again and again
on hundreds of plants.

Then, at the end of the day, when the
male parts have shed their pollen,

she takes the paper bag and taps out
the pollen on to the female parts
of the plants she's protected.

McClintock places a wooden paddle
in the ground

to remind her
which plant was crossed with which.

She then writes down the information
on an index card
which she takes back to the lab.

On too many of the cards,
she's forced to write,
"Pulled up by the birds".

That guy with the gun
couldn't have been a very good shot.

And that must have been heartbreaking
because each one of McClintock's
maize plants is a unique experiment.

Maize in the wild is normally red.

Today the sweetcorn in shops
is yellow

because of crossbreeding a mutation
in that gene.

But in McClintock's mutant maize,
the red colour comes back.

Geneticists at the time
think they understand mutations...

it all seems pretty simple.

When a gene is working as it should,
it's like a light shining,

but when a mutation occurs,
and the gene stops working,
the light goes out.

There may be any number
of explanations for this.

Maybe the filament has blown...

Or the bulb is cracked.

SMASH!

Or the wiring's faulty.

But whatever the reason,
the important thing is, they believe,

the light can never go back on.

But McClintock's maize mutation
is different,

because in many of her plants
it seems to revert spontaneously
back to normal.

A mutation reverting back to normal
should be impossible,

like a broken light bulb
suddenly coming back on.

So she needs to isolate the mutation,

a procedure
she's done a thousand times before.

It should not be hard.
But this time it's different

because the mutation seems
to be in two places at the same time.

And that should be impossible.

She is baffled.
And her interest in the mutation
begins to become obsessional.

That winter, after thousands
of crossbreeding experiments,

all that counting,
McClintock must have been exhausted.

But still her mutation
makes no sense to her.

If it had been me,
I'd have gone over the edge.

The frustration
eventually gets to McClintock.

She has a minor breakdown.

Then, one evening,
after three years of work,

it all begins to make sense.

McClintock finally understands
what is going on.

Like the early geneticists
before her,

McClintock cannot see what is
happening to the genes in her maize.

What she discovers
is a feat of logic.

McClintock deduces that her mutation
can be turned on and off,

that its appearance must be
controlled by some kind of switch.

Mutations that switch on and off.

McClintock showed that genes are
part of a dynamic, shifting system,

and, most importantly, that genes
are under the control of switches.

McClintock's vision
was revolutionary.

Bateson,

Wheldale,

Vavilov,

Borlaug...

before McClintock geneticists thought
that genes were passed passively
from generation to generation.

McClintock blew that idea
out of the water.

She saw that plants could switch
their genes on or off when needed...

..a mechanism for plants
to fine-tune their behaviour

to survive everything
the world throws at them.

A new level on which genes work
in the world of plants.

And yet, for 20 years, geneticists
resisted McClintock's work
as being outlandish.

The discovery of DNA structure
in 1953
and proof of gene switches in 1961,

would give botanists new tools
to control the gene switches
McClintock revealed.

I've watched as that DNA technology
has transformed plant science
during my career.

Geneticists have isolated
thousands of different genes.

They can turn genes on and off

and move them between organisms.

Most of us know this
as genetic modification, GM.

Genetic modification is loaded
with prejudice and misinformation,

so it's very easy to forget
how it fits into the story
of genetics and agriculture

and civilisation.

For 10,000 years,
we have been creating new plants

by putting pollen
where pollen should never go

and by selecting
and preserving mutations.

And as a result of the efficient way
that we grow our crops
in large monocultures,

these plants are susceptible
to pests and diseases.

Now, if we can build stronger,
more efficient plants,

then they will be able to fight off
those pests and diseases,

and their yield will go up.

Certainly there may be risks attached
to genetically modified plants,

but it is a known risk

that people are dying of starvation
because we cannot produce
enough food.

And that situation is not going
to improve as population grows.

So far I believe GM
has failed to address mass hunger.

But that may be about to change.

A global consortium of labs
has launched has launched one
of the most ambitious attempts ever

to tackle world hunger.

Jane Langdale at the Plant Sciences
labs in Oxford runs one of the teams.

Her aim is to revolutionise
the productivity of rice.

So, Jane, why is rice important?

Rice
is an incredibly important crop.

90% of the rice
that is grown in the world

is eaten by the people who grow it.
By the farmers? Yes.

They use it directly for food.
They don't feed it to animals,
they don't use any of it for heating

or anything. They actually eat it.

Right now, you can grow a hectare
of rice and you will feed 27 people.

OK. By 2050, you've got to feed
43 people from that same land area,

and you've got to use
less fertiliser,

there'll be less
predictable rainfall and water

and probably there'll be increasing
competition to use that land
for something else. Yeah.

So it's a big problem.

For the last 40 years,
rice production has kept pace
with the increase in population.

But we have reached the limit
of how much can be achieved with
existing farmland and fertiliser.

A radical new strategy is needed
if billions are to survive.

Jane Langdale wants to change the way
rice does photosynthesis.

Like all plants, it uses sunlight,
carbon dioxide and water
to make sugar.

But rice does this very inefficiently
in hot, dry climates.

Langdale hopes to redesign rice
to make it as efficient as maize.

To me, the leaves of maize and rice
look pretty similar,

so how difficult can it be
to make rice more like maize?

If we are to achieve our goal

of converting rice
into maize-type photosynthesis,

then we've got to completely change
the internal architecture
of this leaf to look like this one.

We've got to completely change
the biochemistry. It's not trivial.

Photosynthesis in maize
depends on those cells that surround
the many veins inside their leaves.

OK, so if we just focus this
a little bit...

and then I can show you
on the screen here,

and you can see that the veins
are stained pink,

you can see that there's two large
veins there and there's about
20 cells in between the two.

Whereas, if we look
at the regular leaf above,
you can see a major vein here,

but then you can count one, two,
three, four, five veins in the same
gap as there is with that one.

So this is essentially
what the rice leaf looks like, and
we need to make it look like this.

We need these more regular veins,

because unless that pattern is there
in the leaf,

then the rice leaf will not be able
to photosynthesise like maize.

Langdale's team is trying to unpick
the sequence of gene switches

that allows maize to make more veins
in its leaves.

The switches are flipped
in the very early stages of life,

so the only way to study the process
is by teasing out tiny patches of
growing cells, buried in the stems.

It's delicate, skilled work.

So I'm bewildered
that Jane's asked me to give it a go!

Pull it out. Pull it out? OK.
There we go. Right.

So we've got our young plant, so...

Right, so if you just put it
on the... I'm looking for something
inside there?

Inside there, yes. How big is it?

Ish?
You know, to the nearest millimetre?

To the nearest millimetre? It's
not even close to a millimetre! OK!

How am I going to recognise it
when I see it?

I'm going to tell you it's there.

Now, be careful. Yeah.
If you make a big cut like that...
I'm being incredibly careful.

..you might go straight through
the main shoot.

It's very much like cutting up
an onion, isn't it, for tea? No.

Careful. I am being careful.

Is it in there? Wait, stop!
Stop, stop, stop!

Increase the magnification
if you can.

Is that it? No.

Is it further in still? Believe me,
I'll scream if you get to it.

Uh-huh...!

Oh!

I hate to say this,
but I think you just lost it.

Oh!

Is it that? Yeah.

Is that it, the middle one
that I've just gone through there?

Yeah. Oh, sod it!

For a single experiment,
Langdale's team needs to dissect
500 tiny balls of cells

of the kind I took two hours
to turn into a mush.

Each phase of this project
seems to me monumental.

The first green revolution
used plant-breeding techniques

that we'd been exploiting
for thousands of years.

The next revolution,
starting in Jane Langdale's lab
and in other labs around the world,

is exploiting
a deeper understanding of genetics.

And it may be a long shot,

but the target
of feeding 9,000 million people
has to make it worthwhile.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk