VOA慢速英语:为满足全球粮食需求科学家们寻找超级大豆

美国之音英语教学，现在是农业报道。

The United Nations says the world's population will increase by 34 percent by the year 2050. Scientists and others know it will be difficult to meet the food needs of so many people. A recent study shows that soybean crops and computers may help deal with the problem.

联合国表示到2050年，世界人口将增加34%。科学家们和其他人都明白这将很难满足那么多人的粮食需求。最近的一项研究表明大豆和电脑可能会帮忙解决这个问题。

The U.N. predicts food production must increase by 70 percent to meet the needs of a richer population. The U.N. expects more people will live in cities than in rural areas. But today there is little too low increase in the productivity of major crops.

联合国预计粮食产量必须提高70%以满足更多人口的需求。联合国预计越来越多人将生活在城市而不是农村地区。但目前主要作物生产力的增长太低。

Kenneth Quinn is the president of the World Food Prize Foundation. He says the need to increase food production is the greatest difficulty humanity has ever faced.

Kenneth Quinn是世界粮食基金会会长。他表示提高粮食产量是人类有史以来面临的最大挑战。

"There's going to be another 2 billion people on our planet between now and 2050 and how are we going to produce enough food for them to eat?" asked Quinn.

Quinn提出疑问“从现在到2050年人口将增加20亿，我们怎么为他们生产足够的食物?”

Darren Drewry is a scientist at the American Space Agency, NASA. He led a study of soybeans which NASA calls the world's most important protein crop. He says researchers using a computer were surprised to find that they were able to create a soybean plant that can be both more productive and use less water.

Darren Drewry是美国宇航局的一位科学家。他领导了一项大豆研究，美国宇航局称大豆是世界上最重要的蛋白质作物。他说，使用电脑的研究人员惊奇地发现，他们能够开发一种生产率更高，更节水的大豆作物。

"We find that there are changes to the architecture of modern soybean cultivars can be made to help us improve on many of these goals," said Drewry.

Drewry说“我们发现现代大豆的结构可以做很多改变，以帮助我们为实现目标提高很多可能性”。

Researchers were able to increase soybean productivity by 7 percent without using more water. The computer helped researchers do work that would have taken many years in the field. The next step is to test the computer's design.

研究人员能够在无需更多水的前提下，将大豆生产率提高7%。计算机帮助研究人员完成了很多在地里需要很多年才能完成的工作。下一步的工作是检测这项计算机设计。

We spoke to Stephen Long about that. He is a professor at the University of Illinois, and one of the writers of the report on the soybean study. He told us by Skype that researchers used computer program to study what would happen if they changed the way the plant grows.

关于这个问题我们与Stephen Long进行了探讨。他是伊利诺伊大学的一位教授，也是这项大豆研究报告的作者之一。他通过Skype告诉我们，研究人员通过电脑程序研究如果改变植物生长结构的话，会发生什么。

"One of the things the modeling predicted is that there's too much leaf area so we're actually removing leaves as the plant's growing to get a lower leaf area. We're also artificially modifying the angle of the leaves as well to reflect what the model predicted," said Long.

Long说“电脑模型的预测之一是叶子太多，因此我们在作物生长时去除了一些叶子以减少叶子面积。我们还根据电脑模型的预测，人为地改变了叶子的角度。”

Professor Long says it is important to find solutions to the predicted global food shortage before it happens. He says it will be 20 years before farmers can begin growing a more productive soybean once they have developed it.

Long 教授表示必须在全球粮食短缺的预言实现之前找到解决办法。另外一旦他们开发出来，农民开始种植这种更具产量的大豆仍需20年时间。

The study on soybeans was published in the journal Global Change Biology. The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation paid for the study.

对大豆的研究发表在《全球变化生物学》杂志上。美国国家科学基金会,美国宇航局和比尔和梅林达•盖茨基金会资助了该项研究。