Ten years ago, the University of Illinois agricultural scientists of the United States has proposed a bold idea: using gene technology repair plant photosynthesis, in order to increase crop yield.
But the idea of the time in the scientific community has been questioned, and many foundations ignored. But the project did not die on this, but received the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the hope that the technology can alleviate global poverty.
Today, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project is a major breakthrough. Genetically improved yield of 20% of the tested plant tobacco was improved. Compared to farmers using traditional methods can only strive to improve the yield of 1-2%, a 20% increase in production is quite amazing. Local time on November 18, "Science" magazine published this research paper.
After years of computational analysis, laboratory and field trials, the team selected the target protein for the experiment, and the tobacco was chosen because they were easy to modify.
The research process is a mechanism used by plants to protect themselves when light is too strong. When plants are directly exposed to sunlight, they usually get more energy than they need, and they activate mechanisms that help them release energy. Because once you can not transfer excess calories, the leaves will wither. This process is termed non-photochemical quenching.
It's kind of like a worker taking a shorter coffee break and then rejoining the assembly line. For the overall growth of tobacco plants, the role of quite alarming.
But when the clouds cover the sun or the leaves are in the dark, lack of light limits photosynthesis, and non-photochemical quenching takes half an hour to adjust and waste energy.
By the National University of Illinois supercomputer prediction, the researchers found that in a day time, non-photochemical quenching process of slow recovery will lead to reduced crop yields. According to the calculation results show that the loss of high amazing. According to the type of plant and then the temperature difference, loss of 7.5% -30%.
Stephen P. Long, a crop scientist at the University of Illinois and lead author of the project, discussed with Krishna Niyogi, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a non-photochemical quenching molecular process specialist, to raise the levels of three proteins, Recovery process.
To test this idea, the team inserted a "combination" of three genes (extracted from Arabidopsis plants) into the tobacco. Using fluorescence imaging, the research team was able to determine which transgenic plant recovered the fastest if transferred to the dark.
By contrast, 20 percent of the two genetically altered plant yields were improved compared to the unmodified tobacco, and the third plant yield was increased by 14 percent.
Of course, tobacco is not the ultimate goal of the study. The team has successfully implanted genes into rice and corn, and may find it more likely to increase plant response to changes in light conditions, Science said.
"We can not 100% determine the technology is valid for other crops, but because we experiment with the object is a crop of all the processes, we believe it will be effective." Stephen P. Long said in an interview.
In Stephen P. Long's view, genetic engineering will bring a second "green revolution", so that food production increased significantly. As in the first green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when advanced agricultural production techniques were introduced into developing countries, crop yields were raised, effectively reducing hunger in the world.
One of the reasons that genetically modified crops have been criticized for so far is that GM technology has not been able to significantly increase crop yields - a farmer can produce the same amount of corn or wheat on a hectare of land.
Now, the University of Illinois research may change the discussion about genetic engineering. "The New York Times" said that some people think that genetically modified technology will be part of the gene from one species to another species, which is a joke with God.
However, if 40 to 50 percent of the crop is raised, the situation will change. Because it can help the majority of the world's poor. But also to meet the needs of UN projects - achieving a 70 percent increase in food production over the next 20 years.
"We want to alleviate poverty in the world, what farmers need, and how we can help them," says Catherine Kahn, who oversees the project's Gates Foundation.