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A paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology outlined how an gene found in wild varieties of rice has been incorporated into domesticated rice to provide tolerance to highly saline soils.
Dr Cristobal Uauy, Project Leader, Department of Crop Genetics, John Innes Centre, said:
“This work represents a very elegant example of using modern molecular genetics and the diversity from wild relatives to address a pressing problem in food production systems across the world.
“Recovering this gene, which was lost during domestication, offers exciting new possibilities to farmers who will now have more resilient wheat varieties to grow on their farms. The ability to boost yield in more marginal saline soils represents an important step towards increasing global food security.”
‘Wheat grain yield on saline soils is improved by an ancestral Na+ transporter gene’ by Rana Munns et al., published in Nature Biotechnology on Sunday 11th March 2012.