Novel Gene Technology for Developing Drought Tolerant Crops

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Drought is a major threat to global food security. Predictive models forecast the occurrence of more frequent and prolonged droughts as a consequence of global warming. This puts unprecedented pressure on global agricultural systems, which should support a growing population without expanding the land under cultivation. Billions of pounds have been invested in research to find solutions to combat the effects of drought. One way of achieving this is to identify new genes, capable of conferring drought tolerance, for insertion into crops by genetic engineering. The major impediment has been that most genes identified to date inadvertently depress crop yields, thereby negating the purpose of maintaining stable yields under stress. We discovered a family of novel genes, which confer drought tolerance to the model plant species Arabidopsis without negatively affecting its growth or seed yield. We are developing this discovery into a gene technology platform to protect crops against drought.