 Welcome back to Science Live. Joining me here now is at the studio is Professor and Director of the UWA Institute of Agriculture, Cannonbot Siddique. Welcome Siddique. Thank you, Elisa. Your goal is to feed the world. You've said maintaining crop production to feed the growing population during a period of climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. How is your research aiding to combat that issue? The climate change is already happening globally and in Australia. For example, our annual rainfall has declined since 1975, 30 percent age. It's not only the declining rainfall, but also the variability in rainfall. So what my research and my group is looking is, can we develop climate-truly crop plants by understanding some of the physiological, biochemical traits associated with the improved adaptation? So for example, we are looking at developing new wheat varieties with the improved drought tolerance, heat tolerance, etc. So in this way, we are having a smarter system before the climate change hits the agricultural production in Australia and globally. What sort of pressures are our agricultural ecosystems facing? We have been very good in increasing production. For example, if you look at the last 15 years, we have increased food production by 138 percentage. So that's about 1.84 billion tons to 4.38 billion tons. Now today, the globe is under tremendous pressure. The amount of arable, cultivable land available is declining. Urbanization is increasing. So we have to produce more food per unit of land. And also some of the past misuse of agricultural land has created land degradation. For example, in Western Australia and Australia, we have salinity, soil pH has gone down, nutrients have declined. So we need to look at an innovative system where we can produce more per unit of input, but also we need to look at our agricultural land through practices such as conservation agriculture. Okay. And why is UWA the best place to conduct your research? UWA has already got the international reputation. We are number 26th in the world in life and agricultural science. We are also located pretty close to the grain belt of Western Australia, about 100 kilometers from Perth. Then we are producing already 50 to 60 percentage of the grain of Australia come from Western Australia. We have a very dry land agricultural system depending upon rainfall. Our soils are hostile. And at the University of Western Australia, we have some very highly talented academics, researchers, and the facilities from basic to applied science and translating that science to the practical application. Okay. And we have also established strong international partnership with the United States, Europe, more recently with China, India, in combating some of the key issues related to agriculture and food production. Okay. What needs to happen to help the world's 1.4 billion people who are poverty stricken and malnourished out of that state? Well, it's a big challenge as you mentioned, Eliza, the 1.4 billion people are undernourished and some of them are not getting enough food. So we've got two things to do. One is to get the food production up because the population is increasing rapidly. The second aspect is empower the 500 million small farmers, meaning they have less than two hectares per farmer. And these farmers are producing 50% of the world's food. So we need to develop the technology and policies to empower these small farmers to produce sufficient food. It's not only the food, the nutrition of the food. For example, one of our PhD students recently discovered that we can enhance selenium, which is an important micronutrient in lentil. This is what we call biophortification. So this sort of innovative science once translated into applied program will help us to alleviate some of the malnutrition and poverty globally in partnership with different countries. Okay. If students are interested in this area of work, where should I begin? I think basically they must focus on science. In this case, they take science as a major with biology, mathematics, and physics and chemistry. And I invite them to come to the University of Western Australia, the Faculty of Science. And once they come in here, there's plenty of opportunities for them into agriculture major, animals, soils, agribusiness, and many other biotechnology and number of options are there. The challenges are enormous and we need young minds, talented minds to come and take up this challenge. And so the food production system, not only in Australia, but globally for the next 20, 40, 50 years. Okay. What sort of major would they begin with to start from? So they will begin with a major as a science. And then by second year and third year, they can specialize into different aspects of agriculture. For example, plant breeding, genetics, soil biology, environmental management, and so on. Okay. So basically if they focus on good science and the science has got the capacity to take those students and then transform them into scientists, policy makers, land managers, food specialists, and so on. A lot of opportunities. Okay. Thank you. We've got a little bit more time today. So going back to the pressures on our agricultural ecosystems, you've compared the agricultural ecosystems current state to the post-World War II green revolution, but now things are considerably more complicated. How do you see them? As I mentioned earlier, we are giving tremendous pressure to the agricultural land. There's less land available than 50 years ago because of urbanization and land degradation. Okay. So what we need is that in the past our emphasis was produced maximum, but now our emphasis should be produced the optimum using optimum input with minimal damage to the environment such as land and water. Okay. And we also need different aspects, not just the science and technology alone. We need the policy. We need the business enterprise. All those aspects needs to be brought into agriculture so we can have a profitable at the same time sustainable agriculture for the future. And it sounds like UWA is a really good place for students to start to do so. Exactly because at the UWA we have the faculty of science and other faculties and students have the freedom to choose majors from different areas. For example, if someone is doing agriculture, they can also take a major from arts or business school. So you can combine your different aspirations and skills and at the same time focus on the key major. Okay. Thank you so much for your time today, Siddique. My pleasure.