Scientists tout success with drought-resistant plants: study Mon Nov 26, 5:34 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - With arid zones expanding worldwide, scientists have created transgenic plants able to survive extreme drought and thrive on far less water in an encouraging potential boon to food production, new research shows Monday.
The discovery could have important implications for food production and maintaining yields amid adverse conditions.
"We hypothesized that it is possible to enhance the tolerance of plants of drought stress by delaying the drought-induced senescence of leaves during the drought episode," wrote Rosa Rivero, one of the co-authors of the study.
Senescence is the growth phase of a plant or its parts from maturity to death.
The study by Rivero, of the University of California, Davis , and Mikiko Kojima, of the RIKEN Plant Science Center in Yokohama, appears in the December 4 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our hypothesis is that senescence is due to a type of cell death program that could be inappropriately activated in different plants during drought," they wrote.
"Suppressing it could therefore enable plants to mount a vigorous acclimation response that would result in enhanced drought tolerance with reduced yield losses," they explained.
The scientists carried out their studies by engineering transgenic tobacco plants.
"Production of drought-tolerant crops able to grow under restricted-water regimes without dimunition of yield would minimize drought-related losses and ensure food production in water-limited lands," they said.
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Note: They said "trans-genic" which of course means genetically modified (GM). This is a "nano-technology" in the truest sense. It is also untested, and will have unpredictable results if spread throughout the biosphere. Sure, some of the very few plants we find commercially useful can then thrive with less water, and, guess what, they'll all be suseptible to some virus or other too, or, they'll crowd out the "native" species so the ground won't recover after an infrequent rain, or they'll not find the insects around they need to reproduce (since insects still need water), etc.
Why do "scientists" insist on "enhancing" nature, instead of finding ways to limit population?
Why do reporters seem to "promote" technologies that will continue our profligate waste and overpopulated ways?
Economics is the answer in both cases. It doesn't pay to be a scientist who isn't working on a commercially viable solution. It doesn't pay to be a reporter who writes bad news...our economic structures all assume, assure, and demand GROWTH of population.
