|
May, 2008
The Blue Revolution, Drop by
Drop, Gene by Gene
Source:
Science via The Meridian
Institute's Food Security and Ag-Biotech News
Elizabeth Pennisi
Science 11 April 2008:
Vol. 320. no. 5873, pp. 171 - 173
DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5873.171
This article discusses
efforts to develop new crop varieties with enhances drought
tolerance. "Drought and tolerance to water stress are very
hot topics at this moment," says Roberto Tuberosa of the
University of Bologna
in Italy, and there's been "a constant increase in interest,
particularly from the private sector." According to the
article, companies and governments are evaluating
"promising" new varieties of corn, rice, and other crops --
some genetically modified (GM) and some the products of
conventional breeding --in the field. Australian farmers,
for example, are "eagerly awaiting" results of a field trial
of GM drought-tolerant wheat that has just been harvested.
The latest sequencing and gene-expression technologies are
being used to make progress in identifying genes that can
help plants withstand dry conditions, according to the
article. "We do know a bit more about what the effects [of
stress] are in biochemical detail," says Hans Bohnert, a
biochemist at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But the article notes
that some skeptics doubt that it will be possible to
manipulate one or a few genes to get hardier varieties.
"There isn't a single, magical drought-tolerance trait,"
cautions Mark Tester, a plant physiologist at the
Australian Centre for
Plant Functional Genomics.
Subscribers to the journal
Science can view the
article online at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;320/5873/171
|
|
