Over 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates have signed an open letter pleading for financial and political backing to develop “moonshot” technologies to avert an impending “hunger catastrophe” that they say will impact over 2 billion people in the coming 25 years. The letter calls for investment and expansion of emerging technologies that could use synthetic biology, gene editing and engineering to improve photosynthesis and enable crops to grow without fertilizers, as well as research into overlooked indigenous crops that are naturally nutrition-rich and can withstand environmental pressures.
