本篇文章共分 7 段，將人類從農業時代開始之後的原始育種方式，一直到近代以科學為基礎的高效率作物工程進行分析說明，闡釋人類在此方面的巨幅進步。

本篇考題英文原文與對應之中文翻譯整理如下。練習作答解題時若有對語意不清楚之處，請仔細查閱對照，以提升閱讀理解能力。

Crop Engineering 作物工程

1. 作物工程歷史悠久

   Our current ability to precisely engineer crop genomes was preceded by a long history of genetic manipulation in agriculture. Human impact and its accompanying effects began early in our history at many tropical and subtropical sites around the globe. Our ancestors were omnivores, consuming whatever plant or animal material they fortuitously encountered. Even then, humans had considerable effects on the environment, reducing and even driving to extinction populations of the animal species they hunted and expanding the distribution of plants by accidentally distributing seeds as they migrated.

   在我們目前擁有對作物基因組進行精確設計的能力之前，在農業中進行基因操作的歷史很長。人類的影響及其伴隨的效應在我們歷史的早期就開始在全球的許多熱帶和亞熱帶地區出現。我們的祖先是雜食動物，食用他們偶然遇到的任何植物或動物材料。即使在那時，人類也對環境產生了相當大的影響，使他們獵殺的動物物種的數量減少甚至滅絕，並在遷徙過程中意外地傳播種子，擴大了植物的分佈。

2. 農業開始

   Humans probably first realized that seeds could yield a stable food supply through agriculture when they observed plants arising from refuse or wasteland, perhaps fruit trees growing along forest and jungle paths from discarded or defecated seeds or else vegetables sprouting in garbage dumps at temporary settlements. A more organized approach to agriculture began about eight to ten thousand years ago coincidentally at a number of locations around the globe. The most diverse farming developed in the Near East, with legumes, cereals, flax, sesame, and fruit trees. At about the same time, New World residents were growing beans, maize, squashes, and potatoes, and Asian farmers were beginning to cultivate rice.

   當人類觀察到植物會在垃圾堆或荒地上出現時，他們可能第一次意識到種子可以通過農業產生穩定的食物供應，也許是在森林和叢林小路上從被丟棄或排泄的種子中長出的果樹，否則就是在短暫居住地附近的垃圾堆中發芽的蔬菜。一個更有組織的農業方式在大約八千到一萬年前，巧合地在全球各地某些地方同時出現。最多樣化的農業在近東發展，有豆類、穀物、亞麻、芝麻和果樹。大約在同一時間，新世界的居民開始種植豆類、玉米、南瓜和土豆，而亞洲的農民則開始種植水稻。

3. 挑選種子

   These early domesticated crops foreshadowed the overwhelming changes contemporary agriculture has wrought in plants. Humans soon learned to separate varieties that could be grown as crops from wild types in order to prevent characteristics undesirable for cultivation from mingling with those selected for farming. Continued selection of crops with desirable characteristics increased the separation between feral (wild) and managed plants and accelerated the diminishing diversity and more limited variation found in today's crops.

   這些早期的栽種作物預示著當代農業給植物帶來了巨大的變化。人類很快就學會了將可作為作物種植的品種與野生類型分開，以防止不適合種植的特性與為耕作而選擇的特性混雜。持續挑選具有理想特性的作物，增加了野生植物和管理植物之間的差異，加速了今日作物中多樣性的減少和更受限的變化。

4. 育種與農業擴展

   The simplest way to select crops is to save seeds preferentially from plants with beneficial traits, and the first farmers selected for large seeds and fruit, increased seed production, lack of dormancy, faster germination, higher annual yield, and reduced seed scattering. The success of this early selection resulted in an accelerating impact of agriculture on crop diversity and feral plants. Crops quickly became commodities, moved and traded over a rapidly widening area, so that many plants were distributed well beyond their previous ranges, and some throughout the globe.

   選擇作物的最簡單方法是優先保存具有有益特性的植物種子，第一批農民選擇了種子和果實大、種子產量高、無休眠、發芽快、年產量高和種子散落少的植物。這種早期選擇的成功導致了農業對作物多樣性和野生植物的加速影響。農作物迅速成為商品，在迅速擴大的區域內移動與交易，因此，許多植物的分佈遠遠超出了它們原先的範圍，有些甚至遍佈全球。

5. 人口增加

   Three phenomena have characterized the more recent impact of agriculture on Earth. The first was the increase in human population, which has doubled at shorter and shorter intervals over the last thousand years. The result was increased acreage under cultivation and a fundamental remodeling of the globe toward managed rather than wild ecosystems. By 1998 there were 3,410,523,800 acres of land under cultivation worldwide, an area larger than the United States. Entire ecosystems have disappeared, others remain but are threatened, and the sheer volume of people and area of farmland have been major forces of biological change.

   有三個現象代表了農業對地球較近期的影響。首先是人類人口的增加，在過去的一千年裡，人口翻倍的間隔越來越短。其結果是耕地面積的增加，以及全球向管理型而非野生型生態系統的根本重塑。到 1998 年，全世界有 3,410,523,800 英畝的耕地，這個面積比美國還大。整個生態系統已經消失，其他的生態系統仍然存在，但受到威脅，而人口數量和農田面積已經成為生物變化的主要力量。

6. 歐洲殖民

   The second event through which agriculture modified our planet was European colonization. Previously, migration and trade had moved crops between countries and continents, but the Europeans inaugurated an unprecedented dispersal of biological material worldwide. Maize, tomatoes, and potatoes were transported from the New World to the Old; wheat, rye, and barley were carried from the Old World to the New; and rice, soybeans, and alfalfa were moved from their Asian sources to every arable continent. Each of these and innumerable other introductions conveyed not only unique material but also assemblages of introduced plant pests and diseases that today cause the majority of pest-management problems around the world.

   農業改變我們這個星球的第二件事是歐洲的殖民。在此之前，移民和貿易在各國和各大洲之間轉移作物，但歐洲人開創了生物材料在全世界各地的空前傳播。玉米、番茄和馬鈴薯從新世界被運到舊世界；小麥、黑麥和大麥從舊世界被運到新世界；水稻、大豆和紫花苜蓿從它們的亞洲產地被運到每個可耕種的大陸。每種植物和無數的其他引進物不僅帶來了獨特的材料，而且還帶來了引進植物的病蟲害，這些病蟲害今天在全世界造成了大部分的蟲害管理問題。

7. 科學先驅

   The third factor shaping the nature of agriculture and the environment alike is the increasing precision with which we have selected and bred crops. This acuity stemmed from many advances, but at its heart lies the work of two men—one, the English naturalist Charles Darwin, and the other, an Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel. The concepts of evolution and genetics were not their work alone, but both of them were decades ahead of their colleagues in synthesizing the companion concepts of natural selection and inheritance that are at the core of all contemporary biological science and that form the substrate upon which biotechnology grew.

   塑造農業和環境性質的第三個因素是，我們選擇和培育作物的精確度越來越高。這種敏銳性源於許多進步，但其核心是兩個人的工作，一位是英國自然學家查爾斯．達爾文，另一位是奧地利僧侶格雷戈爾．孟德爾。進化和遺傳的概念不是他們一個人的工作，但他們兩人在綜合天擇和遺傳的配套概念方面比他們的同行領先了數十年，這些概念是所有當代生物科學的核心，構成了生物技術發展的基質。