The predicted increase in the world population to around 10 billion people by 2050 will require the world to produce more food in the next few decades than in all of its previous history. This will ideally need to happen on less land and with reductions in the amounts of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, which cause huge environmental and human health problems. Plant survival and yield will also be severely affected by a more variable and extreme climate.

To achieve this, we need to produce crop plants that withstand environmental stress and have higher yield despite requiring less agricultural inputs. This talk will present recent advances in the Division of Plant Sciences at the Australian National University that span from exploration of our basic understanding of how plants survive in stressful environments, to opportunities in breeding and engineering crops with higher yield and improved disease-resistance. In addition, we develop strategies to use beneficial soil micro-organisms to provide nutrients to crop plants without the harmful environmental effects of synthetic fertilisers.