This symposium will discuss the rationale, methodology and progress for the new digital soil map of the world (http://www.GlobalSoilMap.net/). A range of speakers from the nodes making up the consortium will give regional perspectives, the scientific and technical challenges applying in assembling and interpreting data, illustrate progress made to date and list priorities.

How are governments and non-governmental agencies responding to the need to maintain and improve soil quality and productivity to meet the needs of their populations?  Soil is increasingly being recognized as an important natural resource that is necessary for the continuing production of food, feed, fiber and fuel.  This symposium will bring together representatives from around the world to explore the policies that have been put into place to encourage the use of management systems that will improve of soil quality.  Learn if these policies have resulted in reduced soil loss due to erosion, improved yields, increased carbon sequestration and if there are other measures of success being used.

Soils are both sources and sinks of the three prominent greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Sink-source strength is dependent on climate, soil physical, chemical and microbiological properties, land use, and human induced management, with increasing interest in the potential offered by soils as significant players in reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming.

This symposium will focus on the role that soils play in both contributing to, and reducing atmospheric concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases across multiple land uses, including the spatial and temporal dynamics of emissions and its simulation, the underlying biogeochemical processes, and the showcasing of land management interventions and strategies for greenhouse gas mitigation at field, landscape and regional scales. 

An estimated 2 billion people in the developing world suffer from the effects of micronutrient malnutrition, caused primarily by poor quality diets which are characterized by high food staple (e.g. rice) intakes. Inadequate intakes of essential vitamins and minerals lower disease resistance, increases mortality, compromise cognitive development, stunt growth, and lower work productivity. Preschool children and mothers of reproductive age are most vulnerable due to their higher requirements.

The density of minerals and vitamins in food staples eaten widely by the poor may be increased through plant breeding - a process known as biofortification. Biofortification can be accomplished through conventional plant breeding or through use of transgenic techniques. The density of trace minerals in food staples may also be increased through the use fertilizers "fortified" with these trace minerals.

HarvestPlus seeks to develop and distribute varieties of food staples (rice, wheat, maize, cassava, pearl millet, sweetpotato, and beans) which are high in iron, zinc, and provitamin A through an interdisciplinary, global alliance of now more than 100 scientific institutions and implementing agencies, working in 42 developing and developed countries. Biofortification demands the application of interdisciplinary research representing plant breeding, molecular biology, human nutrition, food science, farm extension, communications, and economics.

Biofortified crops offer a rural-based intervention that, by design, initially reach these more remote populations, which comprise a majority of the undernourished in many countries, and then extend to urban populations as production surpluses are marketed. In this way, biofortification complements fortification and supplementation programs, which work best in centralized urban areas and then reach into rural areas only in areas with good infrastructure. Initial investments in agricultural research at a central location can generate high recurrent benefits at low cost as adapted biofortified varieties become available in country after country across time at low recurrent costs.

In broad terms, three things must happen for biofortification to be successful. First, the breeding must be successful - high nutrient density must be combined with high yields and high profitability. Second, efficacy must be demonstrated - the micronutrient status of human subjects must be shown to improve when consuming the biofortified varieties as normally consumed. Thus, sufficient nutrients must be retained in processing and cooking and these nutrients must be sufficiently bioavailable. Third, the biofortified crops must be adopted by farmers and consumed by those suffering from micronutrient malnutrition. Biofortified crops must be just as productive/profitable as competing varieties which are not biofortified.