24 May 2011VIB/UGent researchers have unveiled a mechanism that can be used to develop crop varieties resistant to mild droughts.
For years, improving drought tolerance has been a major aim of academic and industrial research, thereby focusing on effects of extreme drought stress. However, translating this research to the field has proven to be problematic.
In a set of papers in Nature Biotechnology and the Plant Cell, the team of Dirk Inz? at the VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent now shows that the focus should be on mild drought stress instead. It turns out that under non-lethal stress conditions plants inhibit growth more than absolutely necessary, opening new opportunities for yield improvement.
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/new_strategy_drought_tolerance_crops
