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Published online 26 November 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.289
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Researchers engineer drought-resistant plants
Genetically modified tobacco doesn't bite the dust.
Researchers have created drought-resistant tobacco plants, which can withstand prolonged dry periods and thrive on 70% less water than ordinary tobacco plants.
The finding could be important for creating other drought-resistant crops, says Jeffrey Leung, a plant biologist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research in Gif-sur-Yvette, who was not affiliated with the study.
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So: someone has just spent time and money making a poisonous plant (tobacco) more drought-tolerant. Are we meant to applaud? Surely the only value to this particular piece of research is if it enables tobacco cultivation to be shifted to droughtier areas - releasing better-quality land for more useful (NB more USEFUL, not necessarily more valuable) crops.
Please remember that tobacco is a model plant, and the results of the reported study may be applied in the studies on another species. Many of basic examinations have been performing on tobacco plants, e.g. studying the mechanism of ozone toxicity and resistance. Best regards, Renata Kwinta.
First comment is from general public perspective. Model plants require many things (easy to transform, tissue culture, etc.). Some model plants are economically of no value (Arabidopsis), yet lots of studies done with it and we learn from them. In a medical world, mouse is used as a model organism and we learn a lot about human from mouse studies (ex. knock-out mouse).
Not quite sure how Nature defines "this" week but the paper didn't appear in today's issue (27 November) of PNAS. Pity! I'm very keen to see under which conditions exactly the drought resistance was assessed.
Interesting both on gene function and application front. Need to translate into other economically important crops
Interesting study, but i am keenly interseted to see, how good the strategy will work in stable food crops like Rice which are mostly cultivated in wetlands of India and other rice growing countries.In these regions already somany people are tring their hand in making drought tolerant rice, hope this study would be useful. moreover drought tolearnce is a complicated quantitative trait.
Such experiments should be extended to enhance or sustain production of foodcrops grown under dryland conditions. In India some such crops are jowar and bajra among others. For instance, the cotton-growing region of Vidarbha where incidence of farmers' suicides is very high, the major cereal is jowar. Unfortunately, area under this crop is reducing. Technology that will increase its production and at the same time reduce the cost for the farmer is very essential.
I would like to say congratulation to Prof Blumwald and his grope for this achievement. since his previous study on Salt tolerance had good results, I hope this strategy will work good too.