The world’s population grows by more than two hundred thousand daily. That’s tens of millions of people annually. To feed them, food productivity must nearly double by 2050.

That’s a task.

Doing that in the face of climate change and the scarcity of land and water presents one of the world’s greatest challenges. Plants are stressed by drought, disease and non-native competitors. But people need to eat, no matter where they are.

In this episode Michigan State University researcher Brad Day describes the tools he is creating to unlocking the secrets of plants to better feed the world. They could produce more resilient, stress-tolerant crops that use water and nutrients more efficiently.