Many scientists are starting to see roots as central to their efforts to produce crops with a better yield — efforts that go beyond the Green Revolution. That intensive period of research and development, starting in the 1940s, dramatically
boosted food production through the breeding of high-yield crop varieties and the use of pesticides, fertilizers and more water. But the increases were accompanied by a depletion of groundwater and, by 1998, an eightfold increase in nitrogen-based fertilizer usage1, bringing environmental problems such as polluted waterways. The leaps in yield have still left many hungry. And the revolution missed many developing nations, some of which have poor soils and limited access to irrigation and expensive fertilizers. “Those strategies of the past aren’t working now to meet growing food needs,” says Jonathan Lynch, a plant nutritionist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.