Genetically Modified Salt-Tolerant Cereal Crops

Filed in archive Diagnostics, Methodologies and Instrumentation , Food and Agriculture , Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics on July 10, 2009

Using a new genetic modification approach, agricultural researchers have developed cereal crops that are able to withstand salinity.

Professor Tester says his team used the technique to keep salt - as sodium ions (Na+) - out of the leaves of a model plant species. The researchers modified genes specifically around the plant's water conducting pipes (xylem) so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot.

"This reduces the amount of toxic Na+ building up in the shoot and so increases the plant's tolerance to salinity," Professor Tester says.

"In doing this, we've enhanced a process used naturally by plants to minimise the movement of Na+ to the shoot. We've used genetic modification to amplify the process, helping plants to do what they already do - but to do it much better."

The team is now in the process of transferring this technology to other cereals and report promising initial results in rice.

Image: This is a comparison of genetically modified plants and non-GM plants grown in saline conditions: (above) non-GM plants struggling to grow in saline conditions; (below) GM plants thriving in the same conditions.

Credit: Image courtesy of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG)/University of Adelaide