Systems biology or the biology of systems: routes to reducing hunger

Each day passes with 854 million people hungry and, for that reason, the United Nations Millennium Declaration committed the world's nations to ‘eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’. Nonetheless, developed nations are both reducing their investments in agricultural research and turning their remaining research investments away from productivity gains (Pardey et al., 2006). The elite rice cultivars, which dominate the food supplies of the...