Novel Gene Technology for Developing Drought Tolerant Crops

干旱是全球粮食安全的主要威胁。预测模型预测，由于全球变暖，干旱将更加频繁和持久。这给全球农业系统带来了前所未有的压力，而全球农业系统本应在不扩大耕地面积的情况下养活不断增长的人口。数十亿英镑已经投入到研究中，以找到解决干旱影响的办法。实现这一目标的一种方法是识别能够赋予耐旱能力的新基因，通过基因工程将其插入作物中。主要的障碍是迄今为止发现的大多数基因无意中降低了作物产量，从而否定了在压力下保持稳定产量的目的。我们发现了一个新的基因家族，赋予模式植物物种拟南芥耐旱性，而不会对其生长或种子产量产生负面影响。我们正在将这一发现开发成一个基因技术平台，以保护作物免受干旱。

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.