Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
to the 28th International Horticultural Congress (Janick et al. 2011). This echoed
the views of Pretty et al. (
2011
) that horticulture has a substantial role in developing
sustainable food supplies especially in under-developed areas such as Africa.
The axis between human health and welfare and horticulture is gaining momen-
tum. The medical profession is now taking the concept that diet, recreation and
health are interrelated very seriously. Possibly the outcomes of the United King-
dom's 1946 Cohort Studies which have dramatically shown that the health of chil-
dren in their early stages, pre-five years old, set the mold for subsequent growth and
eventual health failings have had an impact on medical thinking. Matching genetic
profiles to disease susceptibility will be commonplace, and importantly for horti-
culture the genetic profiles of crop cultivars will be matched with the ability to sup-
press disease onset in very precise terms. Plant chemistry will be precisely tailored
such that it produces medically valuable compounds and suppresses those which
might be deleterious. Alongside this will be crops where their genetics have been
so finely tuned that they produce highly specialised proteins which target the dis-
eases of individual patients. These are the so-called 'Pharma-crops' which express
specific characters capable of producing antigens which are so specialised that they
can target a cancer in an individual patient. Obviously such crops are enormously
valuable and need to be grown under specialised conditions and will continue to
contribute to GDP in a number of developed countries.
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