Starch Crops: First biotech company to develop a strain of corn that can grow so fast that it can be...

...planted and harvested twice on the same field during the corn season.  In North America, the corn season is from the beginning of Spring (beginning of April to late June) to mid Fall (mainly October but can be as late as the end of November).

      However, the above and the following future challenges could possibly be done without genetic re-engineering.  If a grain company where to "simply" monitor crop fields and notes which plants grow faster than the others and then plant the seeds of those and then repeat the process over and over again, this challenge could be accomplished in this way.  The downside of this is that it will likely take a lot longer to accomplish than if it was done by genetic re-engineering, but perhaps some anti-biotech environmentalist group will take on this different approach to prove it can be done and possibly with a better end crop as a result.

      [The above advancement would double the corn production of every farm and thus produce even more food to feed the world.  The above challenge and the following future challenges will become the biggest thing to have happened in agriculture since the invention and use of inorganic fertilizers.]


Future Challenges: First biotech company that develops corn that can grow to maturity:

1) Three times in a farming season.

2) Within a month.

In one corn season, first commercial corn farm (at least 10,000 acres) to harvest:

3) Two crops.

4) Three crops.

5) A crop each month.

As for replanting between corn crops to get the soil ready and beefed up for the next corn crop:

6) First soil-revitalizing crop that can be planted and harvested in one month.

7) First new strain of corn that is designed to operate like a soil-revitalizing crop.  This soil-revitalizing corn strain then alternating with the regular corn strains thus not needing a different type of crop other than corn.  This will save farmers from needing to acquire and maintain different farming equipment (especially harvesters) for another type of crop and thus increase the profitability of being a corn farmer.  To the consumer, they must not be able to tell the difference between these two strands in statistically meaningful blind taste tests.

First biotech company to develop a strain of wheat that can be harvested (from sowing to harvesting) in:

8) 55 to 65 days.  [Currently wheat takes twice that long.]

9) 25 to 30 days.

10) 12 to 15 days.  [This will effectively octuple wheat production.]

11) 12 to 15 days AND operate as a soil-revitalizing wheat crop.

First biotech company to develop a strain of russet potato that can be harvested:

12) Twice in a normal potato growing season.  [In Idaho (a major potato-growing US State), this season is currently from early April to mid October.]

13) Three times in a normal potato growing season.

14) Once a month.

15) Once a month AND be a soil-revitalizing crop.

First biotech company to develop a strain of golden rice that doesn't require water paddies (can be grown like wheat), is a ratoon crop (leaves the roots and lower part of the plant uncut so it regrows without need of being replanted), and can be harvested:

16) In the same time as regular wheat currently is.  [Rice (with "golden" rice being a recent biotech innovation to that enables rice be a conveyor of Vitamin A) is an insanely water intensive crop.  It takes at least 2,000 liters of water to make one kilogram of rice.  Additionally, it is very labor intensive due to being grown in flooded rice paddies, which have to be drained and left to dry out before the rice can be harvested.]

17) Twice in a season.

18) Three times in a season.

19) Once a month.

20) Once a month AND can be a soil-revitalizing crop.  As a ratoon crop, this soil-revitalizing strain of rice would be planted at the beginning of each new season to alternate every season with the above high-yield ratooning rice strains.

Discussion:
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