The Washington Post reported this week on yet another amazing advance in genetically modifying plants. Researchers at the University of California-Davis managed to genetically modify a tomato so that it will grow in salty water. Creating salt-tolerant crops has been a long-time goal of both traditional plant breeders as well as biotechnology researchers.
The salt-tolerant tomato will grow in water containing up to 50 times as much salt as normal. The genetically modified plant does this by taking the excess sodium up into its leaves and away from the rest of the plant.
The research focused on water made salty through irrigation (which tends to leave behind salt deposits), but the plant should grow just as well in naturally salty water. In this way marginal land and land that has been made salty due to years of irrigation could be reclaimed for agricultural purposes.
As Val Giddings of the Biotechnology Industry Organizations told the Post,
This research has very clear and enormous potential. Water is a huge issue now in agriculture and will be getting bigger, so technology that allows plants to use water more efficiently could have great benefits.
Source:
Scientists develop genetically created tomato. Marc Kaufman, Washington Post, July 30, 2001.
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