GLOBAL: Climate-proof food plants are coming
JOHANNESBURG, 15 January 2010 (IRIN): What if we could create a food plant that defied all those doomsday scenarios where extreme temperatures take us all to oblivion (ind i glemslen), and instead kept growing and fruiting regardless of whether it got very hot or very cold?
– We would never run out of food!, remarked Philip Wigge, a scientist at the Norwich-based John Innes Centre, a member institute of Britain’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
That day could come sooner than we think – perhaps in the next 10 to 15 years – because Wigge and co-scientist Vinod Kumar have had a crucial breakthrough. They have isolated a “thermometer” gene that helps plants sense temperature, and this could provide a shortcut to creating plants that fruit in any temperature.
Their findings have been published in the current edition of Cell a US-based scientific journal that is peer-reviewed.
Scientists across the world have been working to create food crops tolerant to extreme temperatures, some of which are already being grown in Asia.
They evolved from a long of process subjecting grain plants to stresses such as drought conditions, and then isolating genes from those that survived to create new variants.
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