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Scientists Develop Salt-tolerant Wheat - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology
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Australian scientists have used two recently discovered genes from an ancient wheat variety to develop a new way to breed salt-tolerant wheat.
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Ancient genes used to produce salt-tolerant wheat | Science Blog
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In a recent set of papers published in the journal Plant Physiology researchers describe the two genes – known as Nax1 and Nax2. The genes work by excluding salt from different parts of the plant: one from the roots, the other from the leaves. The discovery of the two genes is the subject of international patents.
“The two genes originally came from a wheat ancestor, Triticum monococcum,” says research team leader, CSIRO Plant Industry’s Dr Rana Munns. “They were unwittingly crossed into a durum wheat line about 35 years ago and are normally not present in any modern wheat.”
The project began when the CSIRO team used a highly accurate selection method – based on their understanding of how plants tolerate salt – to identify wheat varieties that could cope with higher salinity. They were particularly interested in the premium-priced durum wheat, which is much more salt-sensitive than bread wheat.
“We screened a hundred durum wheats from the Australian Winter Cereals Collection at Tamworth, which contains tens of thousands of wheat types,” Dr Munns says. “Highlighting the fact that the science of plant breeding
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Wheat must be the mot human-evolved plant on earth.
No wonder so many people are having trouble digesting it!
