100 essential questions for the future of agriculture
Yuming Hu, Taolan Zhao, Yafang Guo, Meng Wang, Kerstin Brachhold, Chengcai Chu, Andrew D. Hanson, Sachin Kumar, Rongcheng Lin, Wenjin Long, Ming Luo, Jian Feng, Yansong Miao, Shaoping Nie, Yu Sheng, Weiming Shi, James Whelan, Qingyu Wu, Ziping Wu, Wei Xie, Yinong Yang, Chao Zhao, Lei Lei, Yong‐Guan Zhu, Qifa Zhang
Abstract
Abstract The world is at a crossroad when it comes to agriculture. The global population is growing, and the demand for food is increasing, putting a strain on our agricultural resources and practices. To address this challenge, innovative, sustainable, and inclusive approaches to agriculture are urgently required. In this paper, we launched a call for Essential Questions for the Future of Agriculture and identified a priority list of 100 questions. We focus on 10 primary themes: transforming agri‐food systems, enhancing resilience of agriculture to climate change, mitigating climate change through agriculture, exploring resources and technologies for breeding, advancing cultivation methods, sustaining healthy agroecosystems, enabling smart and controlled‐environment agriculture for food security, promoting health and nutrition‐driven agriculture, exploring economic opportunities and addressing social challenges, and integrating one health and modern agriculture. We emphasise the critical importance of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research that integrates both basic and applied sciences and bridges the gaps among various stakeholders for achieving sustainable agriculture.