Drought conditions are increasingly threatening food supplies all over the world. At the College of Horticulture at Nanjing Agricultural University, a team of scientists just made a breakthrough that could help to grow crops that can survive these harsher conditions, Phys.org reported.
The scientists discovered a genetic mechanism in wild pear trees that allows the plants to tolerate drought. Their findings were published in a study in the scientific journal Horticulture Research.
"Our findings reveal a critical regulatory network that wild pears use to combat drought stress. Understanding this mechanism opens up new possibilities for engineering drought-resistant crops, which is vital in the face of increasing climate variability," said Dr. Xiaosan Huang, one of the study's authors.
The implications of this discovery could be big.
If scientists are able to successfully edit the wild pear tree drought-resisting gene into other types of plants, it could result in crops that are more resistant to drought and extreme heat — two of the extreme conditions brought on by the overheating of our planet, largely a result of our reliance on dirty energy sources like gas and oil.
More drought-resistant crops can't come soon enough, as droughts have already led to a decreased output of many crucial crops such as rice and corn, as well as more niche crops such as the spicy peppers used to make Sriracha hot sauce.
Fortunately, scientists all over the world are hard at work trying to find solutions to this pressing issue.
In Italy, researchers have genetically engineered drought-resistant tomatoes. At the University of Southern California, scientists isolated a protein that acts as a sort of control switch to help plants adapt to shifting water conditions. And in Morocco, scientists have developed several varieties of drought-resistant, high-yield grains.
While ditching the dirty energy sources that caused these problems in the first place is the ideal long-term solution, in the meantime, it seems that we will have more types of crops that can withstand the conditions that pollution has brought on.
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