Nobel laureates and preeminent scientists call for ‘moonshot’ food effort

More than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates are calling for funding and political support to pursue high risk, high reward scientific research that can transform global food systems to avert a ‘hunger catastrophe’ in the next 25 years. An open letter, signed by more than three dozen winners of the chemistry Nobel prize including Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for Crispr gene-editing, proposes ‘moonshot’ initiatives that build on recent advancements in biology and genetics. As examples of such projects, they suggest enhancement of photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, engineering nitrogen fixation into major cereal crops, and the creation of nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi, among others.