“Scientists at UC Davis have created wheat that releases higher levels of apigenin, a plant compound that helps soil bacteria pull nitrogen out of the air, potentially reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer,” reports The Doomslayer.
ScienceDaily reports that
UC Davis researchers engineered wheat that encourages soil bacteria to convert atmospheric nitrogen into plant-usable fertilizer. By boosting a natural compound in the plant, the wheat triggers bacteria to form biofilms that enable nitrogen fixation. This breakthrough could cut fertilizer use, reduce pollution, and increase yields…
Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, the team increased the plant’s production of one of its natural chemicals. When wheat roots release this extra compound into the surrounding soil, it assists specific bacteria that can convert nitrogen from the air into a form that nearby plants can absorb. This process is known as nitrogen fixation.
For many developing regions, this advancement could offer new support for reliable crop production.
“In Africa, people don’t use fertilizers because they don’t have money, and farms are small, not larger than six to eight acres,” Blumwald said. “Imagine, you are planting crops that stimulate bacteria in the soil to create the fertilizer that the crops need, naturally. Wow! That’s a big difference!”
This wheat innovation builds on the group’s previous success in rice, and similar work is underway to expand the technique to other major cereal crops.
Scientists have also “developed new rice varieties that are resistant to drought and heat—possibly useful for mitigating some of the consequences of climate change,” reports The Doomslayer. The new rice varieties will also be helpful to farmers in nations with rising populations who move into sparsely-populated areas where it was historically difficult to grow rice due to higher temperatures and scarcer water.
France 24 reports that “a new strain” of rice developed by scientists in drought-plagued Chile “has generated hope that rice can be grown in seemingly inhospitable conditions” such as cold, dry parts of that South American country.
Chile’s Maule and Nuble regions already contain the southernmost rice fields on Earth, closer to Antarctica than any other rice fields. The new rice strain may enable rice to be grown even further from the tropics.
Scientists are also working on making rice more heat-resistant. The Washington Post reports on how turning off a a temperature-sensitive gene could increase rice harvests and quality:
A team of scientists in China recently announced that they had identified a gene that, when overheated, appears to have a negative impact on crops, lowering yield and producing chalky-looking, pasty-tasting grains. But when that gene is deactivated — through gene editing or through breeding that capitalizes on a naturally occurring variant that doesn’t react to higher temperatures — rice plants produce more and better grains, according to a peer-reviewed paper published last month in the journal Cell.
