As rising temperatures rock the globe and threaten the crops we plant, scientists are searching for ways to make those vital food sources hardier. Mosses may be the answer.
Mosses have complex immune receptors that can be transferred to other plants to protect them from diseases, according to a study published in The Plant Cell, as Phys.org detailed.
Scientists took immune receptors, developed over millions of years, from mosses, liverworts, ferns, and algae — or nonflowering plants — and put them in flowering plants. It turns out they're interchangeable.
This is massive news, as key crops such as corn, wheat, and rice are flowering plants. These aspects of flowering plants have been studied, but the same thing cannot be said of their nonflowering counterparts, Phys.org noted. Bryophytes broke from flowering plants at least 500 million years ago.
"This means that we can use non-flowering plants like mosses or liverworts as a source of new resistance genes against crop pathogens," study author Phil Carella told the outlet. "We show that we can indeed leverage the vast evolutionary diversity of immune receptors from across the entirety of the plant kingdom. So, our scope to engineer immunity is therefore a lot larger than we originally thought."
This follows a number of developments with the three crops mentioned above, which account for 60% of the calories and proteins humans get from plants, according to Project Agriculture. "Short corn" that can withstand high winds and be planted more densely is on the horizon, while rice is getting a hardiness boost from rare strains. Drought-resistant wheat may be essential, too, as a fungus threatens the plant around the world.
Plant-based food is also gaining traction as people move away from the negative health and environmental impacts of meat. Even just testing the water can make a difference, as you can save money and lower your risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
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