Research shows promise for drought-tolerant crops

Barley plants which have four times the drought tolerance of their parent stock have been developed by scientists at the John Innes Centre, working with colleagues at the University of Jordan.

Dr Wendy Harwood worked on the malting barley Golden Promise, which is a heritage variety generally grown in Scotland for the brewing industry.




By putting the naturally-present gene controlling this process into overdrive, the scientists were able to develop barley plants with stomata which closed more readily when water was scarce, retaining the water content of the plant and making them more resilient in drought conditions. Unusually, there was no ‘trade-off’ associated with this change as the plants grew as well in water-abundant soils as their non-modified counterparts.

Dr Harwood added: “This shows that making a single stress-responsive gene more active can have quite a big effect, which is encouraging.”

Dr Harwood said that although this work was promising, development of  commercial crops was still a way off. Golden Promise is a variety often used in genetic research because it responds more readily to genetic modification than  other barley varieties. However, this research paves the way for future work to develop drought tolerant plants.

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