It is another development to support those who contend that science will find solutions to global food-security problems. It also strengthens the arguments of those who call for greater investment in agricultural research and development.
Purdue University academic Burkhard Schulz says the small plants were produced by taking away a steroid hormone, leaving only female traits and reducing the size. An inhibitor, brassinazole, was initially used but cost US$25000/g. Then he found that a cheap fungicide, propiconazole, worked even better.
"If you can find a natural mutation or mechanism that gives you what you need, you are much better off than using transgenic techniques that could be difficult to get approval for," he says.
Though the ability to produce the dwarf maize is not new, Schulz has found a way to circumvent prohibitive costs and produce it cheaply.
"A lot of breeders and farmers are asking whether I have the tiny plants in the field yet but this will take some time," Schulz told his university newspaper. His findings have been published by the Washington-based National Academy of Sciences.
The dwarf plants can "reduce or greatly diminish" the amount of water and fertilizer needed. They also require less land to grow in. "It is essential to change the architecture of plants to minimise how much land we need to produce food and fuels," Schulz says. The methodology used could be adapted for use in other crops, such as sorghum.
The project is an international collaboration involving Purdue, the University of California Berkeley, Japan's Riken Advanced Science Institute, South Korea's Seoul National University and Chicago State University. The research was funded by the Virginia-based National Science Foundation and the US agriculture department.
Fertilizer is grain farmers' biggest cost. Scarce water resources are becoming an increasingly urgent issue. In the northern hemisphere arable land is at a premium. Africa and Latin America have 90% of the world's available arable land.
Source: Financial Mail via I-Net Bridge
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