The race is on to develop new super crops to feed and fuel the planet, says the head of an Ontario biotechnology firm.

Speaking to a seminar for grain farmers in London yesterday, Dave Denis of Kingston-based Performance Plants Inc. said genetically-modified crops with much higher yields are needed now that global grain stocks are at record lows.

“We have to engineer our way out. I don’t see any other way,” said Denis in an interview.

He said pressure to feed the global population will be accelerated by the growing middle classes in China and India who have an appetite for grain and meat products.

He said increasing agricultural production will be a challenge because bringing more land into production will cut into wildlife habitat. World grain production also has been limited by droughts and other extreme weather.

The answer is to genetically engineer crops with traits such as drought, frost and disease resistance, he said.

New varieties of crops geared to energy production are now being developed, he said, and trials are underway to grow crops such as switchgrass than can be burned as fuel or turned into ethanol.

While ethanol production from corn has sparked a food versus fuel debate, Denis said the industry will eventually switch to cellulose-based ethanol from other plant sources. “The amount of ethanol you can make from corn starch are trivial compared to the needs,” he said.

And there have been amazing advances in crop yield.

“People were better fed at the end of the 20th century than at the beginning even though the world population went from four to six billion.”

Syngenta, an agricultural chemical and seed company sponsored the seminar.

Syngenta president Dave Sippell said corn yields have tripled to 150 bushels an acre over the last 30 years. He said genetic engineering could push yields up to 300 bushels.

Syngenta is now working on a corn hybrid genetically adapted for more efficient ethanol production. The company hopes to have the new hybrid in production by 2011.