The Breeding Bottleneck.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations projects that global food production must increase by ~70% by 2050, with ~90% of this growth required from yield intensification rather than land expansion [1].Historically, yield intensification has been driven largely by plant breeding. Long-term analyses show that ~40–60% of yield gains in maize and wheat are attributable to genetic improvement, with the remainder coming from agronomy and inputs [2–5].
However, World Resources Institute data show a stark divergence: while cereal yields have doubled or tripled since the 1960s, vegetable yields have seen far slower improvement at global scale [6]. A major limiting factor has been the lack of affordable, high-throughput yield phenotyping, which constrains selection intensity and genetic gain in vegetable breeding programs [7,8].
Yield Systems removes this bottleneck by converting standard field video into high-resolution, plant-level yield measurements, enabling true high-throughput yield selection in vegetables. By unlocking breeding—the dominant historical driver of yield growth—Yield Systems enables cereal-like genetic gains in vegetables without additional land or water inputs.
References
[1] FAO (2009). Global agriculture towards 2050.
https://www.fao.org/3/i6583e/i6583e.pdf
[2] Evenson, R.E. & Gollin, D. (2003). Assessing the impact of the Green Revolution. FAO.
https://www.fao.org/3/y5160e/y5160e.pdf
[3] Fischer, R.A. et al. (2014). Crop yield progress in global wheat production. Field CropsResearch.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2013.05.007
[4] Duvick, D.N. (2005). The contribution of breeding to yield advances in maize. Crop Science.
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2135/cropsci2004.0001
[5] World Resources Institute (2019). Creating a Sustainable Food Future.
https://www.wri.org/research/creating-sustainable-food-future
[6] World Resources Institute (2019). How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21Charts (Chart 6).
https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts
[7] Araus, J.L. & Cairns, J.E. (2014). Field high-throughput phenotyping: the new crop breedingfrontier. Trends in Plant Science.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2014.03.008
[8] Cobb, J.N. et al. (2013). Next-generation phenotyping. Trends in Plant Science.