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Boosting plant yield by 40%
Why is it in news?
- Researchers at the University of Illinois had been successful in making tobacco plants 40% bigger with the aid of a “genetic hack” or “shortcut” i.e. by genetically modifying a crop to boost its growth.
More in news
- Goal of research: Wider goal isn’t to produce more tobacco but to apply the technique to wheat or soy beans, in order to meet mankind’s growing appetite.
- Project support: Their work is part of an international project that is being financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the British government, among others.
- How to increase efficiency?
- From long time, farmers using fertilizers, pesticides and other agricultural methods to achieve higher productivity, but these techniques appear to have ineffective to extract more significant gains.
- This research found a way to make the process of photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into energy, inherently more efficient.
- An enzyme called Rubisco is key to the process of converting atmospheric carbon into an organic compound the plant consumes, a process known as “carbon fixation.”
- Photorespiration: But the enzyme also acts to “fix” atmospheric oxygen, converting it into toxic compounds that the plant expends considerable energy eliminating — energy that could otherwise be spent in growing. This competing process is known as photorespiration.
- Biological shortcut:
- Scientists came up with the idea of implanting bits of algae DNA into the tobacco plant’s cells to create a type of biological shortcut that would speed up photorespiration.
- When a plant uses less energy on photorespiration, it is able to take that energy and put it into plant growth and plant productivity, rather than using it to metabolise this toxic compound.
Source
The Hindu