VOA慢速英语:Scientists Seek Super Soybean to Meet the World's Food Needs

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.
联合国称，世界人口到2050年将增长34%。科学家和其他人士都知道，要满足这么多人的粮食需求非常困难。最近一项研究表明，大豆作物和计算机也许可以帮助解决这个问题。

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增加70%以满足更多人口的需求。联合国预计，将有越来越多人生活在城市而不是农村。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是世界粮食奖基金会会长。他说，增加粮食产量的这一需求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说：“从现在到2050年期间地球上会新增20亿人口，我们要如何生产足够的粮食来养活这些人口？”

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。他负责一项大豆研究，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，现代大豆品种的体系结构能够改造，以帮助我们改善很多目标需求。”

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.
研究人员能够在不使用更多水的前提下，将大豆产量提高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.
我们就此采访了Stephen Long。他是伊利诺伊大学的一位教授，也是这份大豆研究报告的作者之一。他通过Skype告诉我们，研究人员使用计算机程序研究了如果他们改变了这种作物的生长方式会发生什么变化。

"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教授称，在预计的全球粮食短缺发生前找到解决办法非常重要。他说，一旦他们开发出来，农民开始种植这种生产力更高的大豆至少还需20年。

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.
关于大豆的研究发表在《全球变化生物学》杂志上。美国国家科学基金会、美国宇航局以及比尔和梅琳达•盖茨基金会为这项研究提供了资金。