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Eliminating stress in the field
In July the cornfields were still looking good, with a vigorous, green crop. But then came long weeks of heat and drought which shocked not only the corn but also the farmers. The plants failed to grow, the harvest was poor. The summer of 2003 is believed to have cost German corn-growers 15 percent of their harvest on average.
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| Amount of arable land lost every year to desertification: 6 million hectares |
This is very bad news because the world’s population is growing all the time, while the amount of land available for growing food is diminishing continually. In the future, therefore, it will become increasingly difficult to provide people with enough to eat.
Researchers at Bayer CropScience (BCS) are currently pursing two approaches to making crops resistant to heat and drought. One approach is to scout for new varieties of crop plants which are less susceptible than others to climatic extremes. This is one way of identifying resistant varieties which can be selected specifically, enabling plants with the required properties to be bred in future generations.
The difference between more resistant and less resistant plants is their energy metabolism. Most species use more energy during stressful periods than their metabolism can generate. If their energy reserves drop below a certain level, cell death occurs. We have to look at the plant’s chemistry at cell level to discover the real reason for this; and this is where BCS’s second approach kicks in. The company’s scientists discovered that plants are more resilient in the face of heat, drought and cold if they are deficient in an enzyme known as PARP. Logically, therefore, plants need to be modified genetically so that they don’t produce PARP in the first place, or they need to be treated with substances that inhibit the activity of PARP which is already present.
Both approaches, selection and PARP inhibition, reduce the plant’s negative response to stress. The researchers at BCS certainly hit on the right name for their techniques when they christened them “shock absorbers”.
So far Bayer CropScience has used its shock-absorbing techniques on corn, oilseed rape and cotton, “but in theory we could use them to make any crop in the world resistant to drought-induced stress”, Marc de Block explained. At the same time he emphasizes that this is “a major contribution to safeguarding both the quantity and the quality of harvests if poor weather conditions continue to threaten agricultural production”.
Researchers at Bayer CropScience (BCS) are currently pursing two approaches to making crops resistant to heat and drought. One approach is to scout for new varieties of crop plants which are less susceptible than others to climatic extremes. This is one way of identifying resistant varieties which can be selected specifically, enabling plants with the required properties to be bred in future generations.
The difference between more resistant and less resistant plants is their energy metabolism. Most species use more energy during stressful periods than their metabolism can generate. If their energy reserves drop below a certain level, cell death occurs. We have to look at the plant’s chemistry at cell level to discover the real reason for this; and this is where BCS’s second approach kicks in. The company’s scientists discovered that plants are more resilient in the face of heat, drought and cold if they are deficient in an enzyme known as PARP. Logically, therefore, plants need to be modified genetically so that they don’t produce PARP in the first place, or they need to be treated with substances that inhibit the activity of PARP which is already present.
Both approaches, selection and PARP inhibition, reduce the plant’s negative response to stress. The researchers at BCS certainly hit on the right name for their techniques when they christened them “shock absorbers”.
So far Bayer CropScience has used its shock-absorbing techniques on corn, oilseed rape and cotton, “but in theory we could use them to make any crop in the world resistant to drought-induced stress”, Marc de Block explained. At the same time he emphasizes that this is “a major contribution to safeguarding both the quantity and the quality of harvests if poor weather conditions continue to threaten agricultural production”.
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