www.raupp.info

Global warming is expected to have a significant impact on water
supplies around the world in the future. The increase in heat waves and
drought has left farmers increasingly at risk of losing crop yield,
March 2007 by Salamander Davoudi.

Not only have its reservoir levels slumped but crop forecasts have
been drastically cut. At the end of last year the government forecast
its lowest wheat crop for 12 years, two-thirds lower than the previous
year.

Globally, the annual loss of crops is estimated to be $8bn but advocates
of agricultural biotechnology argue the problem could be mitigated by
the use of genetically modified crops.

The big companies - including Syngenta, BASF and Bayer in Europe and
Dupont and Monsanto in the US - are doing research into drought
resistance in all the major crops, including cereals and oilseed rape,
cotton, rice and corn. But they are not pumping money into researching
how to grow plants where there is no water [water is required not only
for growth but also to keep the plant upright and working].

They are trying to build stress relief into the make-up of the plant.

"When people talk about drought they imagine you are talking about
inventing crops to be grown in the desert - that isn't the case," says
Dr Julian Little, of Bayer Crop Science. "Its more about maximising your
yield in as wide a window as you can make it. "To get maximum yield from
a crop you need the right temperature at the right time and the right
amount of water."

Plant "stress" is not caused by insects, weeds or fungi but is instead
related to weather and climate and is a major cause of yield loss,
scientists say.

"Any energy that a plant puts into stress is less energy available to
put into its yield," says Dr Little. Syngenta has been working on
drought tolerance with corn and soya crops for a number of years.

"The market is developing very rapidly driven by changes in climate
conditions," says Robert Berendes, a member of Syngenta's executive
committee responsible for business development.

Advocates of the technology say it is just as relevant for East Anglia
as it is for Australia, because the last two summers were significant in
terms of yield reductions in the UK.

Syngenta, Bayer and others have identified stress issues and have
genetically modified economically important crops such as oilseed rape
to be more resistant to stress.

One technique is gene silencing. If you switch off a particular gene in
"stress" situations a plant can carry on growing in spite of feeling a
bit hot/cold or struggling for water.

"This is way past the theory of does it work?, says Hugh Grant, the
president and chief executive officer of Monsanto, which is in its third
year of field testing of drought genes for crops.

From a stable of drought genes, we've now selected our lead gene. The
good news is, the first generation of these technologies performs best
in the toughest geographic regions, he adds.

But drought-tolerant genes have not yet been introduced commercially via
techniques such as molecular breeding, and genes with a degree of
drought tolerance are not expected to be available to farmers until
2010.

[www.ft.com]