dependent upon fossil fuel for fertilizer, farm machinery, and 

 irrigation. The decreasing availability and increasing cost of such fuels 

 threaten the current level of high productivity. 



This concentration on intensive monocultures has reduced 

 significantly the diversity of the ecology. It has brought many species 

 to extinction and reduced the variety of natural ecosystems. To 

 counter this continuing trend toward monocultures, diversified "gene 

 pools" must be established and maintained. Critical to future needs, 

 particularly to needs u^hich cannot be readily predicted, is a great 

 variety of genetic stock among species of plants and animals. Yet the 

 tendency has been to ignore many of the food stocks of primitive 

 societies and to destroy vast regions of natural ecosystems which 

 contain a desirable degree of organic diversity. The accelerating 

 destruction of tropical ecosystems is an example of this trend. 



Natural or seminatural ecosystems are essential for an 

 industrialized civilization which consumes enormous amounts of 

 energy and materials and ejects the spent by-products, wastes, and 

 pollutants into the environment. Living ecosystems are needed to 

 assimilate these by-products and to regenerate the essential properties 

 of the physical world. 



The research needs in this vast area are much too numerous to 

 cite more than a small fraction of the major requirements. Better 

 understanding is needed of the processes of primary productivity and 

 the complex web of organic and inorganic interactions evolved from it. 

 This includes greater knowledge of the fundamental physiological and 

 ecological processes by which plants function within their habitats. 

 Understanding is lacking of how these events are coupled into the 

 complex biochemistry of metabolism within the plant. Such insight is 

 essential to better crop production and is necessary for understanding 

 such fundamental ecological phenomena as plant adaptation, 

 distribution, succession, competition, and production within 

 ecosystems. 



Further research is needed to understand better the nitrogen 

 fixation process and the role played by bacteria and fungi. Improved 

 knowledge in this area is required to find natural operating nitrogen 

 fixation processes that would reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. 



Advances in genetics are needed to enhance the genetic 

 manipulation and breeding of improved plant and animal species, as 

 well as to develop and maintain gene pools. Enhanced crop yield, 

 heightened disease resistance, improved protein content, increased 

 utilization efficiency of soil nutrient and water supply are all possible 

 through genetic selection. Such selection may be accomplished to a 

 degree by traditional breeding, but greater success may result from 

 such newly developed techniques as tissue culture transformation, 

 somatic hybridization, or other as yet undiscovered methods. 



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