A Canadian biotechnology company has developed a genetically modified canola that addresses one of the most yield-limiting environmental threats facing farmers today.
By blocking a common protein found in all crops, Performance Plants Inc. was able to develop a line of drought-tolerant canola that has out-yielded control varieties by up to 26 percent under dry conditions in southern Alberta.
Given global warming patterns, building drought tolerance into plants is of paramount importance, but it is difficult to do through conventional breeding techniques, said David Dennis, president of the Kingston, Ont., biotech firm.
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“We believe this study is fundamentally important in providing a solution for the enhancement of crop productivity worldwide,” he said.
It is a discovery that never would have occurred had it not been for the negligence of a graduate student at the University of Toronto, who was studying what impact a certain molecule had on seed development in Arabidopsis, a plant closely related to canola.
Before leaving the laboratory for a long weekend the student forgot to water the experimental crops. When he returned on Tuesday he discovered the control plants were dead, while the biotech plants were alive and well.
The disheartened student was ready to scrap the project and start over.
“His supervisor said, ‘don’t you think it’s interesting your mutant plants are drought resistant? This is really quite important, far more important than the work you’ve actually been doing,’ ” said Dennis.
The student had inadvertently discovered that a molecule called abscisic acid or ABA plays an important role in protecting a plant from drought by sending a signal triggering the plant to close its leaf pores.
“What we’ve done is made the plant more sensitive to the signal ABA,” said Dennis.
Within each plant is a gene that produces a protein that inhibits the action of the ABA signal. Performance Plants researchers put a second copy of that gene into canola, only it was inserted backward, effectively negating the effect of the inhibiting protein.
A promoter in the GM canola turns on that second “negative gene” only when the plant is short of water, leading to a more effective response to the ABA signal.
“Most of the time the plant is growing perfectly normal, the system is totally turned off. Our technology is having no impact on the plant whatsoever,” said Dennis.
The company has completed four years of trials on its drought-tolerant canola. Southern Alberta was chosen as the location for the Yield Protection Technology trials because of its hot, dry weather patterns.
During the first two years of the trials the biotech canola yielded up to 26 percent more seeds than the controls, and those weren’t particularly dry years, said Dennis.
Last year, a weather anomaly led to another interesting discovery. It wasn’t hot and dry in southern Alberta. It poured all summer long, yet the drought-tolerant canola still achieved slightly higher yields than the control varieties.
Dennis hypothesized that’s because there were still brief periods of hot and sunny days. Those “short droughts” can lead to yield reductions, especially if they happen during flowering.
Data from 2005 is not available.
While the drought-tolerance technology was developed in canola it is likely to make its first commercial appearance in a more widely grown crop.
Performance Plants is working with firms in the United States to develop drought-tolerance in corn, soybeans and cotton.
The first large-scale corn trial will take place next in 2006.
While the technology is far more developed in canola, there are patent issues with that crop and Performance Plants has yet to partner with a seed distributor that is willing or able to devote the resources required to take the crop to market.
Dennis expects it will be five years before farmers can buy a commercial version of crops containing its Yield Protection Technology.
Registering GM crops is always a cumbersome process, but in this case it should be somewhat expedited because no foreign genes have been introduced to the plants, he said.
